Darts

I was chatting recently with a colleague who has kids older than the Hatchling.  He said to me, "Does she like it when you play music on the radio?  Does she tap her feet or wiggle around?"  When I said that she did (don't all kids?), he said, "You know what you should get her into? Darts."

This left me reasonably flabbergasted.  In the hiatus left by my speechlessness, he filled me in with more detail: "The great thing about darts is that it really gives them something to carry with them as they get older.  It's great for their confidence, their posture, and they really love it.  Seeing them get so excited as they go off to their darts lessons, it's a real hoot."

I began to make two main points, in a Kevin Rudd kind of way, the first being that giving a three year old child access to darts seemed like a good way of not ever having to look after a four year old, and the second point being that I certainly would get the Hatchling involved in darts just as soon as she weighed 120 kilos and had a beard.  There were also other subsidiary points involved, in a Kevin Rudd kind of way, but then I realized that in fact I wasn't speaking at all but simply lost in my rich inner world, and my colleague was still talking to me.

He was saying, "My daughter started darts when she was three - she's still doing it now and she's twenty four.  It used to be ballet of course, and now it's more this hip-hop stuff, but she still loves it", and I realized that he wasn't saying "darts", he was saying "dance".

The reason I had mis-heard him is that I pronounce "dance" to rhyme with "pants", whereas most people in this neck of the woods pronounce "dance" more like "dahhhnce", like "dahhhling, would you like to dahhhnce?  No tea and scones for me, mater, I'm orf to play on my grahhhnd piahhhno."

Anyway, having figured that out, I'm glad I hadn't launched into my two-fold refutation of the wisdom of getting pre-schoolers playing darts.  He would have thought I was a complete nut.