Friday, October 2, 2015

A Cheery Countenance

When my youngest child, Ty, was in kindergarten, I attended a picnic with his class. A woman I did not know came up to me and asked as she pointed to Ty, “Are you that little boy’s mother?”
When I answered in the affirmative, she continued, “Well, I saw him come up to you and thought if you were his mom, I wanted to tell you something funny he did.”
The woman went on to explain that she had chaperoned a kindergarten field trip to a hospital a couple of weeks earlier. The children were given a tour that included several brief stops along the way where hospital personnel explained things to them. In one of the rooms, they were told to sit on the floor while a doctor spoke to them about the importance of doctor visits. In this room there was an examining table with a manikin laying on it for the doctor to demonstrate on. One of the things he explained and demonstrated was how a doctor listens to a patient’s heart with a stethoscope. As he spoke, he stretched out his stethoscope and placed it on the chest of the manikin. And when he did, Ty’s hand shot up immediately!
The lady said she knew right away what Ty was thinking. She knew that he was bothered by the fact that the manikin did not have a real heart so the doctor would not be able to hear anything through the stethoscope. But the Dr. never acknowledged Ty’s uplifted hand–which Ty began to wave in an eager hope of being recognized.
Very soon this part of the instruction was over and the children were supposed to move onto the next room. Ty looked to be quite frustrated by the lack of recognition of his uplifted hand. So in an effort to console him, she approached him and tried to gently coax him to move along with the rest of the group. She stood by him and said, “Come on honey, let’s go into the other room with the rest of the group.” To this Ty got up to go but then looked at her and shaking his head in exasperation (and presumably referring to the fact that the Dr had tried to listen to a manikin’s heartbeat) he said, “I am surrounded by idiots!!”

2 comments:

  1. It's so awesome when people take the time and tell us things kids do out of our presence (for funny or for good or for ill :) ).

    LOL! Bet he'll become a doctor!

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    1. I enjoyed your comment, Voni. I have four now grown children. Ty, the youngest is now 18. He was the funniest of all of them. I heard someone say once that if a person makes you laugh, you should keep them around because laughter is good for you. My 1st thought when I heard that was that I should keep Ty around because he is so delightful. 😊

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