To Think About

What I have for you today is a story about the 5 year old twins at work. I'm going to call them Mark and John (because those aren't their names). They are adorable and may someday remember all the letters and we all want to take them home. They aren't actually identical, but they look almost identical; we're just now starting to be able to tell them apart. They're good about correcting us if we get it wrong. So, enough background.

Thursday they came in a few minutes early to use the bathroom. On their way through one of the teachers said "Hi, Mark," to which he responded "I'm not Mark, I'm John." She was surprised because she had gotten pretty good about telling them apart. Lucky for us their mom was there to assure the teacher that she was correct; they had decided to try to fool us. It was the first time they had ever done that and she was surprised too. She did make Mark tell the teacher who he was, but then he went back to insisting he was John.

After a few minutes Mark was keeping it up, but John had enough and ran out of the room after him calling, "No, Mark, you're Mark! I'm John!" Mark was pretty persistant, though, until I stood them side-by-side and told them which was which. John was happy, but Mark was not. And that's when the truth came out: I told him that I knew he was Mark and he said, "But I don't want to buy the whistle!"

Yup, it was all a plot on Mark's part to keep from having to buy a whistle. See, we have a toy store at work and the students earn tokens by working hard and trying their best and then they get to shop. The day before Mark had blown the whistle (actually a cheap plastic instrument-type thing; you know the type) and I told him he had to buy it, but he couldn't take it home that day; I was going to put his name on it and keep it in my office until the next day. This meant that he wasn't going to get enough tokens for the car. So he hatched a plan to change his name so that he didn't have to buy it. Of course this meant letting his brother take the fall for him, but this doesn't bother many 5 year olds (except the brother, of course). He didn't get away with it, of course, but it was interesting.

That's my story; you can draw your own insights from it.