This week is Mental Health Week, so my Psychology class has been divided into groups to run various activities over the course of the week. Today was my group’s turn — we had organised “Childhood Games Day”. The five of us, with our Psychology teacher, gave up our lunchtimes1 to run the kinds of games that used to be played at primary school. We got about fifteen people to turn up, half year eleven and half year seven. It’s the year sevens I’m writing about in this entry.

I’m impressed with the year sevens for turning up. The year elevens had to deal with my group members’ constant nagging; the year sevens just came. Of course, they couldn’t come just for the nostalgia they’d get from the childhood games. No, they came for the fabulous prizes. Namely, the chocolate. The chocolate that I was in charge of awarding.

There was one year seven who earned a chocolate in the very first game, which I duly awarded. Thirty seconds after devouring his chocolate, he came up to me — still licking his lips! — and said, “You forgot to give me that chocolate.”

“No, I gave it to you,” I said.

“No you didn’t,” he countered. “You gave it to the others but not to me.”

“I can see you’re still eating it.” Dejected, he wandered off.

Another thirty seconds, he came back. “Can I have that chocolate now?”

“But you’ve already had a chocolate.”

“No I didn’t! You must’ve got me mixed up with someone.”

“Really,” I said, accompanying this with an expression I hoped conveyed an adequate amount of scepticism. He wandered off again.

Another thirty seconds later, he returned. “You only gave me one chocolate.”

“Yep!”

“I was supposed to get two.”

“Nope, only one.”

“No, the winners get two chocolates per game.”

“No, they don’t.”

He wandered off again, since the next game was starting. As the participants in this game flocked to me for chocolate (they seemed not to understand that only the winners received chocolate) at the end, so did this year seven. “Now I get a chocolate, right?”

“But you didn’t win that game.”

“But you still haven’t given me the chocolate I won in the first one!”

Luckily for me, he got pushed aside by a year eleven who also had not won. When the crowd thinned out, he came back.

“The teacher says I get another chocolate.”

“Which teacher?”

“Umm…” He ran off, and dragged my Psychology teacher to me. “Miss, I get a chocolate, right?”

My Psychology teacher looked at me. “Has he already had one?” I said that he had, and she sighed. “Well… look, I guess he can have another one, but…”

“YES!!” cried the year seven. I gave him one of the Freddo frogs that no one seemed to want. Everyone was all about the KitKats.

Thirty seconds later, he came back. “Can I have my chocolate now?”

I stared at him. “No.”

“Oh my God,” he said, “you are SO unfair!”

So, this was all a little amusing, but I have to say I wonder what that year seven is thinking. Does he think that if he tells me often enough that I haven’t given him his chocolate, I’m suddenly going to believe him? How often does this strategy actually work for people? Never, right? Why does he keep trying?!

  1. And our coffee *sob* [↩]