why i think little boys are cool

Over the last week I've noticed three incidents in which little boys were involved in some sort of subterfuge which struck me as rather funny.

1) At the supermarket I noticed a little boy pacing around the confectionary bins, looking rather like a cat pacing around a caged bird or rodent. You could almost see him drooling. Finally, just as I pointed him out to John, my brother-in-law, he looked back and forth a few times, opened a lid and grabbed some lollies, and then sprinted off to the other end of the supermarket where he must have pocketed or eaten his booty in some shady corner.

2) Today at the beach I saw three little boys swinging on a sign that had been pushed into the sand labelled 'swim between the flags'. Of course it fell over. They made several attempts to push it back up, but were way too short to do so. The obvious step to take was therefore to bury the sign in sand so that no one could see what they had done!

3) We went up to the "hills" on Monday (I used apostrophes because what Australians call hills are actually mounds) and after a long walk we ended up at this beautiful old pub with big gardens and live music. We were sitting near a family of small boys, one of which was very attentive to Ruby (my baby niece) and kept telling her things like "I've got gel in my hair!" or "I'm just going to look at the birds, but I'll be back soon, OK?" At one point I looked over to see one of them, aged probably about four, sneaking behind a fencepost and taking a hefty swig of his dad's beer.

My conclusion: Little boys are cool. I'm not sure if this is morally sound, but it was definitely interesting to watch the logic of small males and wonder if perhaps we adults have passed on from that stage of subterfuge or if we just manage to conceal it better? And besides that moral consideration - it was just pretty funny.

Edit: Today my sister's friend and kids came over and two-year-old Thomas* was making "ice cream" in the garden out of leaves and sticks, and handing out different flavours to the adults. Thomas gave me a leaf and left in a blaze of completely unintelligible noise, so the next time he came inside I asked him in that aren't-you-cute voice that I hated when I was a kid, "What have I got, Thomas?"

He looked at me disgustedly. "A leaf."

I have learnt my lesson and will never patronise a kid again.

* This is the bit where I say 'not his real name'.