Too much love and a keen sense of direction to Radio Shack

To an extent, children are just like little adults.  They want to feel like they’re needed, wanted and appreciated and at its root that is what adults want isn’t it? Our five year old wants to help.  He wants to help use my tools, weed the garden, clean or do other things that need to be done around the house.  The bugger is that sometimes when children help, they end up moving the desired goal farther away.  Something happened last week that accomplished something, was unknown by the adults and gave pure, unadulterated joy to a certain five year old.

Earlier last week we had to go to Radio Shack.  As a kid I have some fond memories of visiting Radio Shack.  I never knew why we were going there, but dad always had to buy something that ended with an ‘ode’ suffix.

This time we had to go there to get an adaptor for overseas use.  The kids love going there and (this time) proved not to be a merchandiser’s worst nightmare by rearranging anything that was small enough for little hands to grasp.  Granted part of that might have been due to the fact that our three year old was asleep in my arms the entire time.

Once out of the store I texted my wife to let her know that it was purchased and that they boys were happy.

A couple of days later she had to go back to Radio Shack to get another adaptor.  However, this time I was sick and had to stay at home.  Radio Shack’s around our house are dropping like flies.  Pretty soon they’ll be filled up with teeny tiny cross fit locations for people who want to run around the block carrying boxes of diodes and transistors.

Because of the fewer locations my wife had to punch in the address to a location that she was unfamiliar with.  Immediately after doing so our son asked her what she was doing to the computer.  She said that she didn’t know where the store was and that was all that our little Christopher Columbus needed to hear.

“Mommy, turn the computer off, I can get you there”, he proudly said from the back seat.

Internally, she was hesitant because, we’ll he’s five years old and she did not know about the location that we visited.  “Please, mommy, I know I can find it, pretty please, I promise”, he pleaded.

From our house he enthusiastically led her with prompts like turn here or go that way.   The route took them from the residential area through a main street and past dozens of potential turns.  It’s about a 9 mile trip that can take 10-25 minutes depending on traffic.

Not knowing that there actually was a Radio Shack in the area my wife started to doubt him about 8 miles into the trip.   Her internal dialogue was questioning his directions.  However, just the other week she and I had a conversation where I told her about how observant he is. When we go shopping I’ll sometimes talk to myself and ask things like, ‘do we need any….’and I noticed that more than 90% of the time he was correct. It was because of this that I encouraged her to let him have more free thought and leadership when they’re together.

At the last major intersection he said, “there is the Radio Shack mommy”.  Not seeing it, she asked him for more specifics and he pointed to his left and shouted “THERE it is!”  My wife was floored.  Our oldest son was beaming, grinning so large we all but needed a car with a bigger back seat to accommodate his joy.

She texted me that he helped her with the directions.  I grinned.  When he got back in the car from Radio Shack he immediately asked if she was going to tell daddy that he had helped.  She said yes and he grinned even more.