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Monday, October 26, 2009

A Slug of a Bug {Mama Braggin’ Monday}

As much as I want to be the one to talk to and teach my kids everything they need to know to have success in this world, there’s no way it is going to happen. That’s why we send them to school; because A) I am not gifted in teaching school-type subjects, and 2) there are certain real-life experiences that they will have in school that I can’t give them. There is a lot of non-book learning that goes on at school and I am thankful for a Christian school that provides a safe and Christ-centered environment for some of that learning to take place.

But really, I just got way deeper in that paragraph than what I’m really thinking of today.

Like I said, I want to be the one to teach my kids things, but I can’t do it all.

Enter the summer teen-aged babysitter.

The last two summers we have been blessed to have teens from our church come and babysit the kids during the summer months. If you babysat as a teenager, you know how young kids just love their teens; and my kids are no exception. They loved Miss K last summer and Miss S this past summer.

I mean, what’s not to love. They go to the pool, play Mario Kart, go to the local ice cream shop… it’s all fun. And at some point, in all the fun this past summer, Miss S taught Sarah about the game of “Slug Bug.”

Yeah. Do you remember that from your younger days? Apparently the kids… they still play it.

But Sarah, I think since she didn’t want to actually hit anyone (for fear of the wrath of mama), changed the rules a little bit. She sat down and assigned point values to each of the colors and on our trip to Destin(LINK) this summer, it became a competitive game to see who got the most points.

For a long time it seemed as though she was just making up the points as she went along. We weren’t sure that she wasn’t just pulling numbers out of thin air each time you called, “Slug Bug Green!”

But she assured us that she simply had the point values memorized. So, we took her at her word.

It all just seemed too arbitrary, though.

Until the other day.

Nathan initially did not really get what a Slug Bug is. He would yell, “Slug Bug” at a truck, a Corvette, or even sometimes he would yell, “Slug Bug Motorcycle!”

Yeah.

He recently has been demonstrating a greater understanding of what constitutes a Slug Bug. As we were headed home from piano lessons the other day, he yelled, “Slug Bug Red!” And you know what… it was actually a VW Beetle and it was actually red. I was so proud.

We actually saw several right in a row and Sarah was going back over the points that everyone got as I still marveled and thought to myself, “She’s just making stuff up about the point values.”

Until at one point she simply and matter-of-factly explained to Nathan that “The points are the order of the rainbow.” “WHAT?” I asked, “You mean there is an order to the points for the colors?” “Of course,” she responded, “Red is 1, orange is 2, then yellow, green, blue, and purple. After that is brown, black and white.”

Of course. What other explanation could there be?

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