In the clicks of the garden, an issue such as the placement of a gouache color box also becomes a chapter in "Oz" • Is there hope for a better future?

• Artistic girl

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Nothing in life prepared me for the moment when Naama told me, "Dad, I love Anna Tycho."

It took me a few seconds to recover. "Yes, sure, Anna Tycho, the statue."

"The painter, Dad. And she was also a hospital nurse."

"Yes, sure. Painter," I said, although I was sure she appeared to me under the definition of a sculptor the last time I came across her name, when I filled in some shuffle somewhere in the late '90s.

"And she has lovely paintings, you know? She paints very beautiful trees." I did Google to verify the story. The girl knows what she's talking about.

My initial instinct was to call the kindergartener to thank her for helping my child discover the magic of Anna Tycho, whatever it may be, among all the quarrels and fluids she has to deal with. I don't remember too much of my preschool days, but I'm pretty sure artistic enrichment wasn't part of our daily menu, like beating in the sand, for example.

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Anyway, the girl's stuff made me want to explore her a little bit about what's going on in the garden. I usually leave the kids there and don't think about what happens after the door closes behind me. When I meet the kids after kindergarten, usually in the evening, I ask them what the kindergarten was like, they say "fun", and that is how her non-binding routine ends.

It turns out that all this time I lost a skylight to an entire world I don't know. From the conversation about Tycho and other artists they learned about ("Dad, right, are the best musicians Mozart and Uzi Hitman?"), We got to the conversation about kindergarten and the preschool children's relationship very quickly. I'm not overbearing here - I really didn't know and couldn't believe there were clicks.

I guessed that kids were connecting with other kids at different levels, but what Nama told me sounded more like the organized division into groups at "Oz," minus the picturesque violence and the crippled guy who would probably have looked completely unnecessary if we were watching this series today. I managed to get some information from her among all her mixed stories (we have a certain number of years in the middle of life where we are reasonably capable of telling a story. In the other years we would have been better off making small anecdotes), and then she told me a little something that caught me.

The kindergarten teacher sat her down to paint next to a friend, putting a box of colors between them. For a few minutes each of the girls tried to pull the box to her side, and then the kindergarten teacher said: "Either you find the middle, or no one will paint." For an unknown time (times are very fluid at age 5) Naama and the company tried to find a position that would be mutually agreeable about the midline, and in the end, the day was over before they could reach an understanding.

I tried to think of some educational statement that could be helpful, and then the girl said to me: "Dad, it's okay, sure we can find the perfect middle tomorrow." I'm pretty sure the next generation growing up here is going to be a lot more successful than us.