Some of the kids on my block are
at the age when they're learning to share. This is a hurdle they don’t want to
leap.
"That's mine!" yells Justin, when his sister takes off down the sidewalk on his wiggle car. He wasn’t using it, but that's not the point.
"You have to share, Justin," says one of the older girls. I think she's nine. Justin is five. He knows he's supposed to share. He has plenty of toys. He's grasped the concept, but the execution is not easy.
Growing up in Dust Bowl Kansas, my father learned this one the hard way. He told the story of the only family hairbrush: each year, one of his five brothers and three sisters would receive the hairbrush for Christmas. That kid had to share the hairbrush with the rest of the family, but for a whole year, he owned it.
My dad liked to pull your leg. He might have made that up. They were poor, though, and he wanted us to know better times than his.
One year at Christmas time, when I was very young, he spent every evening in the basement. My siblings and I weren’t allowed down there because he was working on a surprise. Christmas morning, we each received our own set of blocks. Our father had shaped different pieces of wood and painted them. Blue, aqua, yellow and red. He’d made four sets, one for each of us.
"That's mine!" yells Justin, when his sister takes off down the sidewalk on his wiggle car. He wasn’t using it, but that's not the point.
"You have to share, Justin," says one of the older girls. I think she's nine. Justin is five. He knows he's supposed to share. He has plenty of toys. He's grasped the concept, but the execution is not easy.
Growing up in Dust Bowl Kansas, my father learned this one the hard way. He told the story of the only family hairbrush: each year, one of his five brothers and three sisters would receive the hairbrush for Christmas. That kid had to share the hairbrush with the rest of the family, but for a whole year, he owned it.
My dad liked to pull your leg. He might have made that up. They were poor, though, and he wanted us to know better times than his.
One year at Christmas time, when I was very young, he spent every evening in the basement. My siblings and I weren’t allowed down there because he was working on a surprise. Christmas morning, we each received our own set of blocks. Our father had shaped different pieces of wood and painted them. Blue, aqua, yellow and red. He’d made four sets, one for each of us.
One year, it was little chairs. They came from Mexico, but he didn’t go there to get them. He painted our names on the backs. The yellow chair was mine. There was no way my siblings could mistake it for their chair. If they wanted to use it, they had to ask me. But they didn’t need to, because they had their own. My name has almost rubbed off now, but the chair is still mine.
The last year our father made our Christmas toys was the year of the stick horses. With a jigsaw, he cut four, horse-shaped heads out of wood. He bolted each one to a stick long enough to be the right size for its owner. He painted each head blue, aqua, yellow or red. We were old enough by then, so he left the faces up to us.
Mine was the aqua horse. I gave it a little smile, pretty eyes, and a silver mane. It’s girly. I rode and rode and rode that horse. I had no interest in riding my siblings’ horses.
I believe that was my father's point.
We had other toys, and those were free game. But my father's way of teaching us to share was to make sure we each had something of our own.
