HOW DO THEY DO IT?

A friend (and office-mate for 3 years) and her 5-year old son (I'll call him Squirt) came to visit me yesterday. Thankfully the rain stayed away which enabled us to have a wonderful time and a delicious lunch on our roof-top deck.

Since this was the first time they had been to our new condo, I was amazed, once again, by a phenomenon that I've noticed many times before. Squirt had never been to our house, didn't know the layout of our place, was dwarfed by everything. However when I opened the door, he walked straight in, across the living room, directly to Johnnyrectomy - the stuffed monkey who sits on our recumbent bike. (If you don't know about Johnnyrectomy - - I guess that's a post for another day.) HOW did he know to go there without missing a step, without hesitating for a moment, without having a clue where anything else was located?

He played with Johnnyrectomy for a minute then turned and beelined directly to the Jenga game on our bookshelf, pulled it out, and began building his house with the "blocks". How did he know where the "blocks" were? It's not like he stood there for a moment and looked around the room. The only amount of time he had so far in our house was spent focusing on the monkey. Do kids have some kind of radar that points them to kid stuff in a room full of grown-up stuff? This has happened many times in the past when we've had children to our home. It's like they instinctively know EXACTLY where the fun stuff is and walk immediately to it. It's not like I can walk into a room and automatically zone in on wedding albums or Broadway CD's! How do they do it?

Since Squirt did "find" most of the toys in our house, including another stuffed monkey and a service bell I used in my classroom, it made me start thinking...

Most of you know that I'm somewhat of a kid at heart and keep items around my house that one typically wouldn't think would be in a home that doesn't have children. I've always agreed with the quote, "Men do not quit playing because they grow old; they grow old because they quit playing" by Oliver Wendell Holmes. So if there are things that make me laugh or games I like to play, then I'm definitely going to have them in my home. And if people think that strange, so be it. That is something that will probably never change. More than likely, when I'm 80 years old, I'll be sitting in a rocking chair with a stuffed monkey, watching The Muppet Movie (the original one...which is the best one) while putting together a Snow White puzzle. And I'll be smiling!