My life is all of a sudden over-run by kids. There's kids everywhere, how did I ever not notice that there's so many of them around? My latest project, which is about to start this week, involves teaching little kids, in the age group of 4-8 how to dance! An enterprising school principal is taking the initiative to introduce Salsa for children... about time. Obviously, it can't be the same as the adult version, but dance and salsa, in particular, teaches a lot more than how to move isolated body parts. There's rythm, social interaction, introduction to a completely new culture, posture, the positive effects of the beat, etc.
I digress.
Last night, I was at a Christmas party thrown by the CEO of Lufthansa Technik. Yup, it marks the advent of a series of Christmas parties. Food, glorious food!!! I had some brilliant conversations. There was a man from Haiti, who works for Unicef who gave me the real low-down on Merengue, now there's another story to tell at my next Merengue workshop. There was the Turkish guy (called himself the Turkish delight), with his outrageous one-liners and his German wife who made the most amazing cocktail. The couple who own a publishing business and were talking about their next book. The pilots who would tell us which aircraft was flying over head just by listening to the engine's drone. The Spanish woman who sounded totally Indian and her Punjabi husband, trying to figure out if their kids would look like the half-Irish, half-Indian pilot girl. The totally Irish lady, from Limerick, apparently that's a place in Ireland. I thought she was joking at first, 'cos I've written limericks before and given the Irish trait for humor... turns out she wasn't kidding. The most interesting conversation though, was with a four year old kid who blew me away with her tact, attitude, control of language, quick wit and range of diction.
She was hunched over, watching TV with her brother in the lounge while all the adults conversed. I went over and said hello. I won't change the language or the words, these are excerpts from our conversation:
"Hello there, what are you watching?"
She cocks her head, raises her eyebrows, "I only talk to friends. You are not my friend, go talk to my brother."
"Hmmm... how can I be your friend?"
"It's very difficult"
"I like difficult"
"You have no idea!" Tosses her head and completely ignores me.
Then, she stares at me from the corner of her eyes and decides to humor me.
"Ok, but I won't tell you my name"
"That's fine. You've got a very pretty dress on and I really like your shoes." (Funky slippers which lit up in red and green flashes every time she stepped on the floor).
"That still doesn't mean I'm going to talk to you."
"Can I show you a magic trick?"
"There is no magic, only tricks. You can't do magic because no one can do magic." Then she stands up, "Let me show you a trick." Interlocks her fingers, hides her thumbs under her hands and asks me to count her fingers.
"8"
Unlocks her hands, "Look, ten! Now that's a trick, I don't think you can do any better than that."
Contemptuous toss of the hair.
"It was nice meeting you, I have to go now."
I walk away, come back in five.
"I missed you, couldn't leave."
"Wait, when you say you're leaving - that means you have to go out, get in your car and drive. You lied to me when you said you were leaving. I'm not at all impressed."
This kid is gonna be trouble when she turns 15! Her dad's German-Greek and mum's Indian. It was a night of meeting married couples of mixed races, with beautiful children. Very enchanting. Of course, there was tons of chocolate too.
