Career Strategies of a 4 Year Old

Christian is already career oriented. His preschool assigns jobs weekly to the kids. Their glitzy and glamorous jobs can be snack helper, line leader, caboose or calendar helper. Naturally, some jobs have more glamour and prestige than others. Some come with great responsibilities. Some are more highly coveted than others. Christian's favorite jobs are snack helper, line leader and calendar helper. He loves being snack helper because of the power associated with the position. You get to dole out snacks, ring a bell and tell people to sit down. Calendar helper is an equally powerful job. It involves a pointer. You get to stand in front of your seated classmates and tell them the day, week, month and weather. It's a great responsibility and he wears it well. He needs to exercise a little more caution with the pointer but even Walter Cronkite started somewhere. Well, line leader. Need I say more? It's being the lead dog during the Iditarod with the added perk of ringing a bell and ordering your subordinates to line up. He likes to take initiative and jazz it up. Sometimes, his line does the conga. Sometimes they hop. Sometimes they skip. But, alas, the lowly job of caboose is not a coveted position. In fact, he came up with a brilliant career strategy. He outsources the job. If he is picked for caboose, he simply assigns it to a friend. His friends love being the caboose. They clamor for the role. They try to bribe him. Again, the power goes to his head. But, at age 4, he knows where his strengths lie. And, he discovered, as the caboose, the view never changes. He has decided he is a leader, not a follower. His teacher has decided the sheer brilliance of it makes it amusing to watch the substitution replacement selection process.I applaud his creativity. I also fear what jobs he will try to outsource at home.