Pesum Porchithiramae ! - #3

When my "azhagi" was ~3yrs old, she was on her quest to learn letters. In their room, there is a name board with their names on it - ones that my wife and I painted from scratch. It read - Sanjay - in one, Maanasi in other. When she was 3yrs old, we called her "baby" and she liked being the baby of the house. So one day, she asked what was written there. I pointed to her brother's name plate, spelled it and said "Sanjay". She realized that her name is on the next one. So, immediately spelled out "m-a-a-n-a-s-i." and exclaimed "baby" !!!

Up until she was 3yrs old, our "kutti mooki's" animal world was as simplistic as it can be and everyone was happy - all birds that fly in the sky are "crows", all birds that walk are "ducks" and all insects are "bees". Right there, Carl Linnaeus would have taken her under his tutelage without hesitation.

One day Maanasi came back complaining about something that she didn't like in school . The school site had some construction work going on and there was a lot of echo in her classroom. The main complaint she had was the echo was copying her,  she did not have a good feeling of the echo copying whatever she saying. We didn't bother to explain her and ruin the cute disappointed expression she was sporting.

Maanasi's preschool recently got a new director for the school we were discussing about the director at home at that time she asked what the director does at school. We explained that she's the one who is taking care of all the schools activities and its working. She had a quizzical look on her face and with the extreme cuteness she replied, "I have never seen her doing anything. All she does is sit in a corner and watch". Sometimes you got  to leave it to a kid to call things as they are - things that we adults are socially constrained to speak out loud. Bliss of childhood !!

During her early preschool days, she was going through a phase that her brother went through as well - and that is - all things have a name and sometimes the name is written on it.  We drove past our grocery store complex and she knew the name of the store. Hence, equipped with her newly acquired wisdom and alphanumeric skills, from the distance she read out loud -  "V - ZERO - N - S.... Vons". Okay, the store people need to make some font distinction to help out a young learner here. Zero and O do look awfully similar.You can't blame Her Cuteness for this mistake.