Isn’t it frustrating when a major scandal erupts, like oh say, the collapse of our economy, and immediately everyone involved starts pointing fingers at everyone else and trying to escape blame despite the fact that everyone else on the planet can plainly see the truth? Wouldn’t it work more to their favor to own up and say something really witty and unexpected? Wouldn’t that make us all smile and think, “Hey, they’re not so bad!”?
Take this example as expounded by the children of our CTR 5 primary class (that’s sunday pre-school for you heathens):
My wife was teaching a lesson on honesty, which 5 year olds understand intrinsically of course. She was reading to the kids a story about a little boy whose Mom had made a fresh batch of cookies. The Mother left the cookies out to cool on the counter, instructing the boy not to eat them, and left to do whatever Moms do when they’re not baking cookies or leaving pies on the sill (must have been laundry day… *SLAP*). Well, as you can guess, the boy ate all of the cookies (he was a very fat boy). When the Mother returned, she saw the cookies were gone and, rather naively if you ask me, said to the boy, “what happened to the cookies?”
At this point my wife, who had the kids at rapt attention, turned to them and said, “What do you think the boy should say to his Mom?”
There was a very split-second moment of silence as the kids processed the question and then Evan, who has a condition similar to mild autism and is thus very wise, threw his hands up in the air and shouted, “SURPRISE!”
We did not correct his answer.
