SHOOT YOUR SHOT ;; TAEKOOK

14

You know, as a child, you can never really distinguish what is right and what is wrong for each family. You just know what is right for yours – everyone has their own 'norm'.

Growing up, Taehyung thought a lot of children live within their own familial bubbles, never really questioning the behaviourisms of others.

But when he was seven, he started to take notice. He began to see... differences.

See, Peter Parkers' mom was always on the sidelines, cheering her son on and handing out home baked goods whenever there was a sporting event on at school. Suzan Pevensie's dad used to haul her up onto his broad, muscular shoulders every Friday afternoon after he had finished work early and came to school to collect her – it used to make her so... happy. And John 'freckle face' Bennett's parents used to get more excited about parents night than he did, knowing fine well every report would always be A+ perfect.

And while Taehyung was sure many children took no notice of these private moments between parent and child, he did.

And he came to a conclusion.

They were all, utterly and completely – weird.

But time kept creeping forwards, as time has a habit of doing. And he took stock of how... regular an occurrence this all was. It seemed to him as if the whole school was under some kind of magical spell, for every parent that he could see, simply doted on their child.

Taehyung didn't get it.

Being the ever logical child that he was, he had decided to get to the bottom of this... whatever it was. This... conundrum.

Taehyung decided to conduct an... experiment, of sorts.

Notepad at the ready, he had singled out six different children to watch, and avidly spent a whole week jotting down his observations from a quite area of the school yard. The results were really quite startling.

Taehyung found that each parent made an effort to personally drop off and pick up their child before and after school. Taehyung found that the parents enthusiastically engaged in 'school talk' with their children – what had they learned that day, who had they played with, did they eat all of their lunch, and so on. Taehyung found that many of the parents knew each other, and actively encouraged this bizarre concept of 'play dates' outside of school hours. But most shockingly of all, he found that this... this oddity of lavishing ones child with affection and praise – was really very common.

Entirely stumped and not quite ready to fully embrace his seven year old cynicism, he took it upon himself to interview every child that he had been watching. Taehyung had decided to ask them one question, and it was the same question for all – because that was the 'fair' way to do things. Miss Jen had explained this to them during a science experiment in class one afternoon – you always had to be 'fair' and give equal measure to all things.

So he put forth his question.