Surprised by New Knowledge

There are times as a dad when I’ve been surprised to learn something about the kids. With whatever experience I’ve had, and as much as I’d like to say nothing surprises me anymore, that’s just not true.

To my surprise (and great amusement) I recently learned the 3-year-old selected an unexpected term for expressing dismay. He challenged his older brother to a race and after the older brother declared victory by saying, “I win!” the 3-year-old admitted defeat by exclaiming, “bean bags!”

Try it out. Not only is it an unexpected exclamation but the syllables and sounds just work.

Then there was this tidbit of information that completely floored me. I picked up some kids books from the floor in the house and said something about so many books having missing pages. The 11-year-old got this funny look on his face and said he knew one reason why pages were missing.  “We use to eat them.”

I looked at him incredulously and he clarified, “well, not eat them but like tear off little pieces to chew on.” All I could think was, “bean bags!”

As I continued my questioning he explained that when he and his older brother were “three or four” they thought the pages of books might taste like gum so they tested it out. He said they didn’t do it that often… Which means the first taste test was inconclusive I guess.

I’ve said the boys are like goats before but never would I have guessed this level of goat-like ridiculousness had occurred.

Then there was this revelation, also by the 11-year-old, that caught me completely off guard. I can’t even remember how this came up, but I know we were sitting around the fire pit telling stories and he told me this.

When he was six or seven he carefully printed the words “baked beans” onto a scrap of paper. He then folded this scrap of paper and hid it in between the pages of a book on the shelf in the hallway.

No, he and his brother weren’t going to chew on the paper later. The planning here was so many layers deeper than that.

He’s homeschooled and during lunch, probably when brothers were complaining about what they were having for lunch, my wife mentioned that kids in public school don’t get to pick what the cafeteria is serving for lunch.

My son was struck by the thought that if for some reason he went to public school someday he better know the names of the foods he likes. He later asked what the beans he likes so much were called. “They’re baked beans,” I had responded.

Little did I know that he was gathering this intel in order to write it on a piece of paper and hide it in a book so he could retrieve it if ever he got sent to public school and needed to know what type of beans he’d like in the cafeteria.

How can you not be surprised by a revelation like this?