The Key to Persuasion is Repitition

Daniel is on a campaign.

This is not unusual.  And, as usual, his campaign is absolutely relentless.  When Daniel was just a baby - probably somewhere between six months and  a year old, my brother noticed that, when he didn't get what he wanted, he would scream/cry/agitate without letting up, not so much out of sincere passion, but rather working from the assumption that some combination of unpleasant sounds and actions would eventually result in him getting what he wants.  My brother's reaction was:  "He's outrageous!"  I said, "Yes."

Nothing has changed.

Well, technically, the one change is the things that he screams about.  Nowadays, it's something he didn't know about in 2007, partly because it hadn't been invented before, and partly because he was a baby, namely a "DS."  I still don't know much of anything about this amazing DS, except what I've heard from him, but apparently it's some kind of expensive, complex, highly portable video game box - one which Ethan, his best friend, has.  And apparently our bankrolled-by-my-tax-dollars school allows these things in the school, being played with during some kind of "down-time," and also children can play with them on the bus.  Hence the even greater-than-usual ferocity of the current campaign.

Every few hours - when he remembers, which he usually does - during the past few days, during his waking hours with us, Daniel has asked each of us, "Can I get a DS?"

My answer: "No."

But Daniel always looks for a loophole, however remote:  "Can I get one when I'm ten?"

Daniel is seven now, so that would be about two-and-a-half years.  Not that he can imagine that span of time, but it doesn't matter:  if he can get an affirmation that he'll get this DS at the age of ten, then it moves the whole proposition from the realm of the impossible to the realm of the eventual.  It would be much easier for me to say "Yes," even though I hate it when children play with video games; it would be a tempting cop-out, since theoretically this would by me over two years of silence on the subject, and by 2016, they'll probably have new technology that supplants the DS in any case.  But I think I should try to be ethical, so I say, "No," - initially with some empathic murmurings - and then he screams.

And Daniel has a poet's knack for composing the most horrible statement possible when he's unhappy, or even just bored.  The two real gems to come out of these post-canned-dialog outbursts are:

1.  "I'm not lucky!"

and

2.  "I feel unspecial!"

The statement about his unluck stems from the fact that he has bad parents, unlike Ethan.  The second statement, however, offers a rich category to the enemies-of-Mr.-Rogers'-legacy crowd:  "You're unspecial, neighbor!"

Apparently Amy did say "Yes," to the 2016 plan, at least at one point, because Daniel was saying, "I can hardly wait 'till I'm ten," based on the assumption that he would be getting a DS at that point.

But the question keeps coming, and Amy's latest formulaic answer is absolute brilliance:  "You can have whatever you want."

They say that torture during interrogation yields unreliable intelligence from the victim...

(March 30, 2013)