Thinking Out Loud, Volume CCXCII

It was a dark and stormy night. No, really. It was dark and stormy....and it was night. Our kids were small at the time, and we had just finished tucking them into bed. We decided that we had better check the weather to see if there may something serious headed our way when I heard my little girl call, "Daddy!!" I went into her room to see what she wanted, and she said, "I'm afraid an airplane is gonna crash on our house." I replied, "Darling, do you hear that weather outside? There's no way anyone is going to be flying an airplane in a storm like this." "Okay," she said. I gave her a little pat and told her there was nothing to worry about. Within a matter of a few moments I heard the familiar drone of an aircraft flying overhead. "Daddy!!" What is that sound?" Now what was I supposed to say? "That's a reconnaissance plane. It's a weather plane they send out during storms to make sure everyone is okay," I lied. That satisfied her and she soon fell asleep.

Near Oklahoma City there is a tourist attraction known as Frontier City. The last time we visited it, our son was about four or five years old. One of the attractions they have is an old wild west gunfight. "The kids will enjoy that," we thought. We made sure we were at the right place at the right time, and sure enough, right on schedule, here came some mean looking cowboys headed our way; and when we looked the other direction, we saw some more. Within a matter of a few minutes, shots were being fired and dead cowboys were lying all around us. I looked down at my son and quickly realized he was NOT enjoying the show. He was shaking all over. I tried to explain that those guys were just playing and those guns didn't even have real bullets, but convincing him was not an easy task.

Years passed and the kids grew up. My daughter and her husband were living in an apartment in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and the family decided to spend last Thanksgiving with them. Angie and I stayed in the guest bedroom, while my son and his family got a hotel room downtown. Sometime during the night, a fire broke out in the kitchen at the hotel, and as a precaution, they evacuated the entire building until they were sure they had it all under control and it was safe for all the guests to re-enter their rooms. To the majority of the hotel patrons, the entire episode was simply an annoying inconvenience, but to my four year old grandson, it was much, much more. The following night, he wanted no part of that hotel, so he slept with me at the apartment. Several times before he finally fell asleep, he asked, "Poppa, is this apartment gonna catch on fire?"

Sometimes I think that as adults we forget what it's like to get inside the mind of a child. Things we don't even give a second thought are major events to them. It may be no more than a vehicle making a loud noise that scares them, and when we try to soothe them with our explanation, we inadvertently use words they don't even understand. I can remember a couple of events in my own childhood that absolutely terrified me. As a pre-schooler, I went to school with my uncle one day. I was fine until the last class of the day. The teacher, Mr. Brooks, was crippled and walked with a severe limp. That scared me, and I started crying. I thought he was drunk, and I'd never been around a drunk person before. (In later years, Mr. Brooks became my principal, and I adored him.) The following year, when I was in the first grade, some kids on my school bus were saying that the next night, Russia was going to bomb the United States. At bed time that night, I informed my parents about that situation, but they assured me it was not true and the Lord was watching over us. I went to bed unconvinced, because Mom and Dad had not been on my bus to hear everything that was being said, even by some of the third graders, who definitely knew what they were talking about.

Why am I saying all of this? I guess it's because that's what's on my mind right now. I'm trying to purpose in my mind not to ever forget that all of those countless questions are being asked due to an insatiable thirst for knowledge, and those small impressionable minds view the world from an entirely different perspective. "Training up a child the way he should go" requires wisdom, and if I want to be as successful as I would like, I will have to re-train myself to see the world through the eyes of a child.

Preston