"And a Little Child Shall Lead Them"

In the last couple of weeks prior to vacation, Ian had been begging for a compass for quite a while, even though he didn't entirely possess the term "compass" itself; he had described it in different ways, sometimes winding up saying something like "Daddy, what are those things called again?" When I would say, "Compasses", he would say "Oh yeah - a compass" - and continue to try to pin down a time and place where we could get one for him.

Since we were heading off on vacation, just shy of two weeks ago, I told him that we could probably find him a compass in a souvenir shop, and, after all, we were headed for "Souvenir Country." This Nation of Knick-Knacks became very real for him. For much of our vacation, Ian wanted to know exactly where Souvenir Country was, so that he could know when we were within reach of a compass. It was as if we were somewhere near the frontier of the Federal Souvenir Republic, and he wanted to know when we would get to customs and how quickly it would take us to cross the border and get down to business. I don't think he entirely understood Souvenir Country as a metaphor...

In any case, the "Country Store" in the town where we rented a cottage did not disappoint. They actually had three compasses, ranging from $3.00 to $5.00. Ian agonized about which one to get, and I didn't want to make an arbitrary recommendation, but it did occur to me that the one with the long yellow neck-string would be perfect for Ian, since he could wear it around. He chose the recommended model, and, unsurprisingly, has spent a couple of days walking around "in uniform", donning the yellow necklace of navigation, as if we never know when we might need a six-year-old to point us in the direction of South-by-South-East.

I showed him how to line up the needle with the "N" for North. It turned out, I was looking at the wrong end of the needle (it was dark in the Country Store parking lot, which is of course where Ian was eager to get immediate compass orientation). Already on the ride back to the cottage, Ian was comparing the (perceived) compass reading against the postmodern neon direction-indicator on the rear-view mirror of Amy's minivan, and, to my horror, I found that the readings were indicating the exact opposite direction from what the minivan techocompass was indicating. Ian quickly picked up on the discrepancy (which I had attributed to bad manufacture, rather than bad tutelage from Daddy), and when we got a look at the compass in the light, it all became clear, and Ian started reporting our precise direction of motion very accurately, and not infrequently.

But the first reading - already in the parking lot of the Country Store - was by far the best one, if perhaps the least technically savvy:

"Daddy, we are going in between North and South."

(July/August 2010)