A Great Story!

Our two-year-old grandson loves to tell us about things that happen to him - even though we don’t always understand every word he’s saying.

His family lives across the road from a cow pasture. Recently he told me how a calf had escaped from the field and kept calling out to his mother - MAAAAA!

My son confirmed that this had happened, saying that the cow and calf walked back and forth next to each other, frustrated that a fence was separating them.

Finally my son drove to the nearby farmhouse to inform the farmer that a calf was loose.

My grandson and his mother had watched all this with great interest through the window.

I could picture it all. But where was his sister? I wondered.

“Did Ivy go with daddy or did she stay with you and Mommy?” I asked.

“Go with daddy,” he replied. “Push the calf through the hole.”

“Ivy pushed the calf through the hole in the fence?” I tried to clarify.

“Yes, Ivy push a calf… Hole.”

Later I asked my son, “Did you and Ivy push the calf back through a gap in the fence?”

“No,”he replied. “Nobody touched the calf. The farmer built an enclosure around the calf, then made an opening into the field - and the calf went back in. Ivy stayed indoors watching.”

All this left me wondering; Did my grandson see what was happening differently than his father? 

(I remember reading that we interpret what we see based on what we EXPECT to see…)

Or was he telling me what he THOUGHT SHOULD happen?!

Or … was he just making up an interesting story?! He seemed to love it - and I did, too.

I wish I could have been there to see it happen… especially the way HE said he saw it unfold!