Today my colleague brought her 7-month-old baby boy to the office and left him with us for an hour or so. Playing with the little guy triggered me to write this short little piece. He was a friendly little fella who didn't expect much pampering. He played with the small small stuff lying around our office and kept himself busy. Some how the electronic and computer related items seemed to fascinate him more than tennis balls and other kids toys. He loved telephone and network cables, he played the game of 'Follow the cable from one room to another', religiously licking the cable every feet. I personally thought that this is how he made sure that he was still following the same cable. The funda is very simple - lick it, if it tastes the same, it's the same cable and you are in the right track, otherwise you are so lost buddy!
'What makes a child smile when playing peek-a-boo?' must definitely be taken as a research topic. It is not that the kid didn't know where we were when we hid. He knew that the other person did not disappear and come back again but is just hiding behind the wall. He would sit on the floor with eyes full of expectation and laugh like crazy when you finally showed up. Even if it is the n-th time you play this game, he still laughs like it's the first time for him! Every single kid under the Sun loves peek-a-boo. Infact if U want to befriend a shy kid and U dunno where to start from, you can start by playing peek-a-boo with the baby. This is a technique I always follow and has a 95% success rate.
He seemed to have a special way of selecting his toys, he first tried popping the stuff in to his mouth, if it fit in to his little mouth, it was perfect, otherwise he placed it in his not-so-special category. There are bunches of wild speculations about what goes on in the little mind of the baby. Some say that the kids know every thing when they are born, each kid is born a genius and as they grow, they hold on to the stuff that the need and forget the rest. The movie 'Baby Geniuses' is based on this concept. Same way this guy knew a lot of things, the minute he saw the table tennis racket and the table tennis ball, he knew that they go with each other. The small snag was that he was trying to hit the racket with the ball, but still hey, he knew that they go together, what gets hit by what doesn't matter.
Kids are amazing. They are very tender and their enthusiasm is very catchy. They possess the magical power of changing the mood of the people around them. When a kid smiles at you, no matter how bad your day has been you immediately smile back. No one ever has second thoughts about reciprocating a baby's smile. I think playing thirty minutes with a kid is the best relaxation technique any one has ever invented. Being a kid is a wonderful phase! I don't know about the rest of U, but had I been given a choice I would have opted to remain a kid forever.