i hear my children talk this morning:
Walter (10): ‘Noëmi, I don’t know what happened, my mobile phone won’t work – can you fix it, please?’
Noëmi (14): ‘Ok, let me see… ready, here you are. It was quite simple – even mama would have been able to fix it. So may I ask you to next time check with her first, and only if there is a real tech problem, come to me?’
‘We’ve just been in the food shop and THEY’VE RUN OUT OF THE MANGO BISCUIT AND THE HEART-SHAPED ICE CUBES!!!’
My daughter’s (14) unerringly accurate sensor for the expected economic depression.
We went out for a drink with our daughter (14), together with her BFF (they don’t have ‘friends’ any more, that’s archaic remains, now they have BFFs, right?), and I managed to take some really good photos. It’s widely known how perfect photo subjects teenagers can be, which issue is deepened by specific circumstances, such as whenever you have more than 1 individual from this very unique age group, and so after this intro you might have found out already that my offspring in this picture is located on the left. I succeeded, however, to take beautiful memories of some total strangers, e.g. look at that nice lady in her perfectly sharp green cardigan..
School yard, long break.
One of the teachers (dragging a sobbing 5-year old along to my daughter):
‘Noëmi, Tim says you have just called him an Exceptionally Wicked Child.’
My daughter (13): ‘Correct.’
Teacher: ‘May I ask you not to call him this name any more? You can see it hurts him a lot, he is crying.’
My daughter: ‘Tim hit my little brother a few minutes ago so hard from behind that Walter is still in pain.
If somebody is an Exceptionally Wicked Child, I think it is fair to call hem an ‘Exceptionally Wicked Child’.’
Teacher: ‘I understand now – still, could you please find another solution?’
My daughter: ‘Well, OK. Since this level of wickedness is really exceptional and does not occur very frequently in our school, in the future I will call him ‘Limited Edition’.’
Our daughter (13) coming home, changing clothes in the hall, meaning dragging her shorts off through her boots.
She (quickly looking at my face while I am watching the heroic struggle):
‘Mom, I know you have difficult moments right now, and I want you to know how proud I am of you that you do not say a word…and that you keep it this way..’
I am watching a TV program about how Roquefort is made. Our son (10) joins in.
He: ‘What are they doing?’
Me: ‘Roquefort.’
He: ‘Oh, Cheeses Christ!’
