the MVP of RPS

for their last big hoorah of the summer, both kids are attending an all-day local camp called camp new life.  they arrive at 8:45 in the morning and leave at 5:00, and in the hours in between, they go fishing, play miniature golf, make leather crafts, do archery, swim, play games, and do a bunch of other things that leave them absolutely exhausted and sort of comatose on the ride home.  on the days i've driven our carpool for pick-up, all four of the children sit in the back seats and mumble two-word responses as their eyelids get heavy.  so it's not often until dinnertime, when they have a bit of extra nourishment in their bellies, that they perk up and regale us of stories from their long day.

yesterday, liam was the one who excitedly shared what had happened to susanna at lunch.  apparently while the entire camp eats, one member of each of the eight cabins is selected to participate in a huge rock-paper-scissors contest.  each representative casts their move against another cabin's representative in a sort of smallish version of the NCAA basketball tournament, "RPS'ing" (that's their shorthand name for rock-paper-scissors) until they arrive at one overall winner of the day.

yesterday was susanna's day.  our reserved, quiet chickadee got up in front of several hundred people (reluctantly, apparently, but she did it nonetheless) and, one by one, decimated her opposition.  she took no prisoners; she didn't apologize for her prowess.  she just defeated 'em all.  liam was so excited for her that he jumped up from his table and ran to the front to give her a hug and a kiss.  probably not the reaction desired by someone who shuns the spotlight, but hey, if she's going to be this talented, she's gonna have to learn how to deal with the fame.

i loved the story, and just chalked it up to susanna having a little bit of luck on her side.  chris, on the other hand, delved deeper.  "so, what was your strategy?" he asked.  "you must have had a way of choosing what to do each time.  how did you outwit all of your competition?"

surprisingly, susanna had an answer.  "well, i had been watching it for the past couple days, and kept noticing how boys almost always choose 'rock'.  so whenever i was against a boy, i knew i should go with 'paper'."  she grinned.  "it worked every time."

chris laughed out loud.  "this is crazy!"  he said.  "i swear this exact same thing played once on 'the simpsons'!"  and sure enough, within a minute he had located the exact clip on youtube.

i'm not really quite sure what to think about all of this.  as someone who has never seen an episode, i'm impressed as to how true-to-life this animated show turns out to be.  i'm also impressed that susanna's powers of observation confirmed something that apparently is quite accurate.  but mostly, i'm impressed that my husband could dig deep into the vaults of his memory and recall a 19-second segment of a show that aired in -- get this -- april of 1993.  that's more than twenty years, people!

i guess that the next time i really need to get deep into the mind of my seven- and eight-year olds, i need look no further than a funny-looking fox cartoon.  enjoy ...