Keeping up with The Jones

Sunday, February 04, 2007

Who is this Mr. Josh anyway

This morning I glanced at the bulletin and saw words I haven’t seen in the seven months I’ve worked here:

**All children 6 years and younger can meet Mr. Josh now to go upstairs**

I had forgotten that I agreed to be added to the nursery rotation, but it was no big deal because I’m pretty much a kid magnet. I took the four of them upstairs and watched them play.

I found myself trying to reason with them, “Let’s not make too much of a mess. We’ll have to pick it all up in a few minutes, so only pull out what you’ll use,” even though I knew it would be in vain. I thought back to my own childhood, when I would intentionally and strategically begin every play session by pulling every single toy off the shelves onto the floor and then wade through my playroom grabbing whatever caught my fancy and conveniently dropping it when I was done.

I remembered the philosophical battle my parents would wage each evening: teach my brother and me responsibility and accountability by making us pick everything up ourselves, or help us so we’d actually finish sometime that week. This usually didn’t turn out in their favor.

Knowing all this, when I heard the closing song playing downstairs I sprang into action. I used the old, “who can pick up the most toys the fastest” clean-up game. It worked to near perfection, with three of the four flying around the room picking up toys, while the fourth stood mesmerized saying, “that’s not a game.”

Luckily the rest were undeterred. Based on the information below, can you guess which child didn’t buy into my game:

A) a 2 year old boy, the pastor’s son
B) a 3 year old boy, sporadic attendance
C) a 4 year old girl, regular attendance
D) a 5 year old boy, the older brother of “C”

3 Comments:

At 2/06/2007 8:43 PM, Blogger Steve said...

My guess is the girl.

 
At 2/07/2007 11:26 AM, Blogger Steve Carroll said...

i can't guess because you told me the answer that's no fun

 
At 2/10/2007 5:55 PM, Blogger jdjones said...

Steve is correct. I found it interesting that an older sibling would buy in and a younger wouldn't, but perhaps this is a case of males being more competition driven.

 

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