Surfing the Inner N8

There’s a little two-year-old guy at the Training Station that always calls me “Man.”  While all the other kids call me “Pastor Nathan” or some variation of that name (such as “Bouncy Efan,” “Master Neeson,” or “Kafran Afan”), this little guy simply calls me “Man.”  When he’s on the playground he’ll sit in one of the Jeeps or plop down in a swing, and when he sees me outside he’ll start yelling very loudly, “MAN!  MAN!  HEY MAN!!!”  I’ll push him for a few minutes and when I stop he’ll inevitably start yelling again, “Man!  Push us, Man!”

Finally one day I told him that if he kept calling me “Man,” I would start calling him “Kid.”  As I was explaining this to him, he was looking at me very intently, and I could see in his eyes that he was really thinking about this, really processing it in his two-year-old mind.

About ten minutes later he sat down in one of the swings, spotted me halfway across the playground, and shouted, “HEY!  BIG KID!”