A post about my biggest boy on his 6th birthday

Today is my oldest boy’s 6th birthday.  As the youngest kid in his grade, it’s nice for him to be “catching up” to the rest of the kids.  Sure when he comes back to school there will be some kids turning 7-year-old, but to him he’ll be 6 like most of them.

In honour of his 6th birthday (besides our regular celebratory trips to the Mandarin) I have a post I’ve been keeping to post on this day, about a conversation him and I had a couple of weeks ago.  It just seems to fit – him turning 6, and me turning 40 in the new year…

Here it is;

In early December, Linus came up to me and asked me to give him some money for school.

“What do you need to buy?” I asked.  “Does mummy know?” figuring he’s already hit her up and is now trying to extort money from me…

“I’m not buying anything”, he said. ” I need old money for show and tell… I have some already but I need more.”

He proceeds to show me a penny with the year “2000” on it.  “Yes, that’s old… To you!”  I say to him.  “But surely we can do better than that!  Let me find some older coins for you.  Like when Daddy was younger.  Let’s go look”.

So off we went looking through my change where I found a 1972 penny.  “Here buddy… This penny is one year younger than Daddy”, I say.

“GASP!  He says, before he turns and bolts out of the room.

“Stewie!!!  Daddy gave me REALLY, REALLY, REALLY OLD money!!!”

“Hey!… It’s not that old!” 

So off I went to find older money to show the kids that 1972 is not super-museum old.  I found a dime from 1968, a penny from 1956 and then a penny from 1932.

We discussed how old this money was by comparing it to ages of family members.    He seemed generally unimpressed by it all, even when I handed him another old penny, a 1944 one on his way to school.

So I kept giving him old coins figuring if he wasn’t going to be impressed maybe his teachers would, or some of the other kids in his class would tell their parents… I went and found a whole lot of old coins and gave them to him.

When I came home from work that evening I made a point to ask him right away how his show and tell went and if anyone like his coins. 

“Oh yes”, he said. 

“My teacher liked them, as did my classmates… Which is why I put them in the charity can, so others can like them too…”

“You did WHAT?”

“Gave them to charity”, he said.

“OH… Okay…”

So the point of this story is… I’m really, really, really old and my son likes to give to those less fortunate than he is.

Happy birthday Linus!