The three year old engineer

You know your small boy (or girl) is going to be an engineer - at least in brain type, if not exact career path, when:

1. He lines up everything neatly.  There are too many examples of this in Nathan's life to count...  But a couple would be the lining up of any vehicles he's playing with, and his playing of the memory game: All cards must be the same way up, even if it's just the pictures on the reverse of the cards, and they must be placed in neat lines...  Heaven help us if anyone introduces him to a set-square!
2. When drinking from a glass, he has to position it so the writing (IKEA!) is horizontal... 
3. When playing with a car with motorised wheels, he picks it up, just to turn it upside down and watch the wheels going round.
4. His vehicle noises are convincing enough to get you to look in the sky to see the aeroplane that isn't actually there.
5. His three favourite things are a torch, a screwdriver and a tape measure (metal and retractable, of course...)
6. He has an inbuilt fascination with how things work...  The trigger for this post was a few incidents I had with Nathan emerging from the bathroom with a wet sleeve...  It was wet with water, nothing more unpleasant, but more wet than would have been caused by an over enthusiastic hand washing.  I found out the cause of this by spying on him...  Let's just say that toilet cisterns are plenty wet enough, and also very interesting to a certain type of brain...

The List

One of the great things I've been able to do now I'm not working, is help out with a small discipleship group at our church.  This cell group has some very beautiful 16 to 18 year old girls, and it's been a joy getting to know them, and walking with them through some of the joys and trials of being a teenager.  It's also put some things from my own teenage years into a new perspective.

We talk about all sorts of things: life, learning, God the universe and everything really.  We also spend a fair amount of time talking about relationships.

One story I've told them recently, is about something that happened to me just over ten years ago...

It was the summer after my first year of university, and I was spending the day with Cath, one of my old school friends. Cath wouldn't mind me telling you that she'd had a very bad track record with men;  habitually attracted to the bad boy who would behave badly and treat her even worse.  It pained me to see her hurt - again.

I concocted a plan.  I got her to write 'The List'.

This list was to have all the characteristics she wanted in her next boyfriend on it.  The main part of it was full of non-negotiables, the things that weren't up for discussion.  Then at the end, she added a few preferences... 

She felt a bit daft writing it, so I (happily single at the time) decided to write a list too.  I made it comically specific:

1. Male
2. Christian
3. Aged 20-25
4. Caring
5. Secure in himself
6. A bit taller than me - maybe 5 foot 10
7. Brown, curly hair
8. Brown eyes

The funny bit, and the bit my youth cell like, is that I met Paul (super husband) the very next day.  Paul, who happened to fill all the criteria...  Every single one. 

Now I know there's nothing magic about writing a list like this - of course not.  And I know that sometimes the people we marry aren't always 'our type'.  I would have still married Paul if he'd had different colour hair (!)...  I still think it's a good idea to think about what you really want in your partner, and then stick to it; it might help in relationship disaster prevention!

Cath, my lovely school friend, now has a lovely list-fulfilling husband of her own, and a beautiful new baby too.  It's amazing what can happen in ten years, isn't it?