How Six-year-olds Know Things that Grown-Up Men Don’t

My nephew has been visiting. He is six, and wise beyond his years. He loves the physicist and daughter the younger (who henceforth shall be called the lawyer as this is her ambition and I feel it unfair that she should be referred to as daughter the younger when daughter the older gets to be called by her ambition). The nephew (as I don’t know his ambition he shall just remain the nephew until he reveals his life plan to me) wanted to play with the aforementioned professionals. This is what happened:

The nephew rose bright and early as is the wont of six-year-olds. It is one of life’s great mysteries why the very young should want to rise at six in the morning. Have they not discovered that no one else is up? That no one wants to play football, sofa-destroying, peanut butter-face smearing or extravagant nose-picking before the hour or seven? Thus the very young are left in the position of poking the not-so-very-young with footballs, sofas, peanut butter and snotty noses for hours on end before eliciting any response resembling foot-twitching, cushion launching, nut-based-product facials or nasal excrement rearranging. Why has natural selection not led to only the late-rising child surviving? Especially considering that the worst offenders of the early-rise seldom survive past the age of six since their loving parents have either killed them, or they have been taken in by social services as their parents have been driven to an early grave by lack of sleep and thus they lead a life of parentlessness which drives them to drink and drugs and an early death due to lack of sleep.

So, nephew, six o’clock, wants to play with physicist and lawyer, whom, we must remember, are teenagers. It is the other great mystery of life why teenagers are totally incapable of rising before noon. What happened to those bouncy six-year-olds who rose a good six hours earlier? And yet another great mystery of life – surely in the transition between six and teen there must have been an era of total sense, when the child rose at a decent hour? Yet, no parent can ever remember that. No child can ever remember that. The only explanation it is that getting up at a proper time, say nine, actually erases people’s memories. This technique is often used in war-time situations. Simply by allowing generals, government ministers and senior civil servants to rise at nine they fail to remember that there is a war on and therefore actually win the war by not making the stupid decisions that their early-rising enemies are making between the hours of six and nine when their small children have poked snot in their faces.

So, nephew, six o’clock, wants to play with daughters. Sets up board game on kitchen table and sits down to wait.

Nephew, three minutes past six, has run out of patience. He decides to write aforementioned daughters a note. It reads –

‘I’m waitin’ for you to come an’ play Cranium’ He writes two notes, one for each sleeping teenager. The notes are clear and concise and I am impressed by the use of apostrophes, the voice, point of view and how he can even write in his London accent.
He places the notes outside the appropriate bedrooms.

So, nephew, ten minutes past six, wants to play with daughters, and thinking that he has been waiting a very long time. He takes his pen and goes upstairs to amend the notes. They now read –

‘I’m waitin’ for you to come an’ play Cranium. You must come now!’ The exclamation mark is quite explicit. The teenagers sleep on despite the noisy use of a ball-point pen just outside their rooms. As well as the nephew reading the notes loudly out loud, thus impressing me further with his reading skills.

So, nephew, twenty past six, wants to play with daughters. Daughters sleep on oblivious to six-year-old suffering. By eight o’clock I finally take pity on the poor boy who by now has written a four thousand word treatise on how the physicist and the lawyer should really get up and play Cranium with him without further ado.

I am too kind to point out to the nephew that if he had only risen an hour earlier he could have played Cranium with the girls as they got back from town at five and probably would have been in the mood for a good board game.

‘Shall I play Cranium with you?’ I ask kindly.

‘No,’ he answers very firmly. For a moment I am upset and insulted. That is until he adds ‘because you are always right.’

It is a delight to discover that a man finally understands me. I make him several pieces of toast and offer to publish his life’s work.