My son and my nephew were playing video games together. Junior turns 6 in 10 days, my nephew will in 5 months. Listening to them tonight was like watching the Leominster city council on the local cable access channel.
I don’t even know what game they were playing, but they spent 30 minutes arguing over which of them had picked red, thereby totally blowing all the time they had available to play the game. Both of them were too stubborn to just say “okay, you can be red” because they had reduced it to who was right and who was wrong about who had picked it first. What was at stake wasn’t being red, it was being correct. They lost site of what was important, which was to just pick a color and play the game.
I did take the time to point all this out to Junior on the ride home and he got very upset when he realized they’d blown it. I heard snuffling in the back seat, and when asked I was told he was feeling sorry for himself. Well, hey, no need for me to point out that’s what he was doing.
He says next time he’ll say “okay, you can be red” but part of me sees a lot of Jody in him, and I’m the kind of gal who would rather be right than just about anything else, which is why I’d make a lousy politician.
