by Patricia Mallicote Albert

Created on: December 16, 2008

Children listen more than you realize, and form their own opinions about everything. This fact was proven to me when I was showing my four year old granddaughter some pictures I had taken at a racing event. Her grandfather races bicycles in the Senior Games and he wanted me to take his picture before one of the races. He wanted the picture taken as he was doing his warm-up ride so he could see how he was sitting on the bike and if he needed to make any adjustments. The way you "sit" your bike makes a lot of difference in how comfortable you are in a long race. I snapped several shots from several viewpoints with my digital camera.

The races are always led by a police car and several others are placed around the course to ensure safety. But as I was taking the practice pictures, all of the police cars were parked alongside the road in front of a small grocery store. They just happened to be the in the background of several of the pictures I took that day. I never gave them any thought as I looked at the pictures I had printed at the local shop.

But several days later, I was putting the shots in our Senior Games album and my granddaughter was "helping me". I noticed she kept looking at a couple pictures longer than the others. She talked about what her grandfather was doing in each picture and then she wanted to know all about the one of him on the podium when he was given his gold medal. But she kept one of the practice pictures in her lap and looked at it again before saying, "Mamaw, I have a question".

She was very serious and I knew that she had been thinking about this for some time. So I told her she could ask me anything. But I was a little hesitant because you know the saying, "out of the mouths of babes". She looked at the picture I had taken that had the police cars in the background. She held it up for me to see and she said in all seriousness. " Mamaw, is that the police station or are those policemen just buying donuts?" I was so amazed at her question, there was a laugh inside me that I didn't dare let out. I answered her with the truth, they were there to help protect the racers. She was satisfied with that but my mind was racing. Where did she get the information to form such an opinion. I asked her just that question, and she told me that they were always doing that on television. So children do listen more than you realize and they process what they hear for future reference.

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