Small Person Conversing

This weekend, I had cause to engage in conversation with two small people. By small people I mean children. One was seven years old; the other will be five on Wednesday.

The conversation with the seven year old centred mostly around a heated game of Star Wars Top Trumps yesterday lunch time. He insisted I shuffled the cards with my eyes closed, in case I cheated. This was rich coming from a child who, within ten minutes of the game starting and when he saw I was winning, began some unashamed cheating himself.
'I'm not playing with you if you are going to cheat,' I said, laying my hand down on the table and crossing my arms across my chest.
The child fixed me with an uncertain stare.
'I mean it,' I said. 'If you want the game to continue, you have to play fair.'

The game resumed. I continued to win cards from the child. The child tried to confuse me with his dazzling knowledge of all things Star Wars. My Star Wars knowledge, on the other hand, is limited to being able to identify C3PO, R2D2, Chewbacca, Luke Skywalker, Han Solo and Yoda and that's only because when you squash Phoebe's ears flat across her head, that's who she looks like. Apparently.

I felt I was at an unfair disadvantage vis a vis Star Wars knowledge, especially as I have never made it more than 20 minutes into any of the films following the 1977 original, and think the whole prequel before the sequel, running 'em all in reverse order and changing the goody to the baddie and back again is all one giant marketing hype that preys on the weaknesses of people like, well, this seven year old child I was beating pretty comprehensively in a card game.

Still, I battled on. And then I started feeling a bit guilty that maybe I was being too ruthless in my attempt to win the game. So I decided to cut the child some slack, and tried to 'lose' a couple of cards, figuring that I would still win because I had in my possession most of the best cards anyway.

But even then, in a deliberate attempt to lose a few cards, I STILL carried on winning. Well, I thought, this win is meant to be. The child resorted to cheating again. Even that didn't help his cause. This is a salient point of 'cheaters never win', I thought. My ethical fair play is being rewarded by the cosmos. The child elicited two more adults to assist in his heinous cheating ways. Still it did not work.

Anyway, I couldn't quite bring myself to unload the child of all his cards so declared my victory when he still had five cards spread on the table in a cheating spread way.

And do you know what he said? He said, 'I WIN!'
'No you bloomin' well didn't,' I said. 'My pile of cards is considerably bigger than yours AND I didn't cheat. Besides, it is good to lose sometimes. Losing gives a person a sense of realistic perpective on the world.'

And I know this because my Dad always played fair when I played him at draughts as a child (I was the child, not him). He never let me win because I was only a child. And when I did beat him, victory was great and genuine, not hollow and placatory.

The child looked at me.
'Okay,' I said. 'Don't you think it is a good thing to be happy when someone else wins? Don't you think it is nice to be able to accept defeat with a smile and congratulate the person who beat you for a game well played?'
'No,' said the child. 'I want to win all the time.'

My second conversation took place in a hotel in Stafford. Andy and I had arrived for a party. We went to our room and as soon as we opened the door, it was obvious someone had been smoking in there. It was a top floor room, so I imagine that when hotels allowed smoking, this was one of the designated smoking rooms and the stench has never quite cleared from the furnishings. And as you are aware, dear reader, one of my biggest (if not THE biggest) bugbears, is smoking. I cannot abide it, especially the smell, which makes me gag. We opened the windows, and got ready for the party, showering with the bathroom door open so the aroma de hot water 'n' steam 'n' shower gel 'n' perfume would waft throughout the entire space.

A knock on the door annnounced the arrival of some friends of ours, who were also going to the party. They had with them their small daughter whose favourite hobby is to ask as many questions in a row as possible in an attempt to make the adult lose their rag as soon as possible.

'Does it smell of cigarette smoke in here?' I asked the friends.
'Yes,' they said.
'Then I'm going to tell Reception,' I said. 'Because I don't want us getting caught by this,' and I picked up a small card that was on top of the TV which stated the no smoking policy of the hotel and that if anyone smoked in a room, they would be charged £100 for extra cleaning.

In Reception I spoke to a nice young lady who assured us there would be no extra charge. She said,' Have you used the room? Because if you haven't, I can probably move you.'
Of course, we had used the room, so a move was deemed not possible. But that was okay. It's surprising what an open window, a stiff breeze and a good squirt of Chanel 19 can do to lift cigarettey stinks from a space.

The small daughter of our friends had listened to this conversation whilst making precise adjustments to her fringe and party tiara.
'Why can't you have another room?' she said.
'Because we've already used the room we've got,' I said.
''Why have you used the room?' she said.
'Because we were getting ready for the party,' I said.
'Why can't you have a new room?' she said.
'Because we have used the bathroom,' I said.
''Why did you use the bathroom?' she said.
'Because we wanted to have showers after our long journey,' I said.
'Why did you want to change rooms?' she said.
'Because the one we've got smells of cigarette smoke,' I said.
'Why are you in the attic?' she said.
'Because we are naughty and that's where the hotel people put the troublemakers,' I said.
'Why can't you change rooms?' she said.

At this point Andy the diplomat stepped in and ushered us all to the car park.

Earlier, the small child had engaged me in a conversation about why people think Mrs Thatcher was a bad person.

I soon put her straight on that one.