Friday, February 04, 2005

The one on how our kids call the cops

As some of you know, Nathan, my one-year, five-month-old baby boy, has begun to walk. He also has begun to show interest in all things techie. It is for this reason, apparently, that he insists on pressing the OFF button of my computer to shut it down (while I'm still on it, mind you), grabbing the mobile phone of his mother (while she's still on it), and pretty much just tinkering with everything he can get his chubby yet grubby hands on.

Lately, he's gotten into the habit of lifting the telephone's receiver off the machine just to say, "Wo?", his version of "hello." So one day, he lifted the phone and jammed his palm on the telephone's numbers pad. The nanny thought nothing of it until she heard a voice on the other line, so she grabbed the receiver from Nathan, and said "Hello?"

"Bantay-Bata 163," the voice on the other line said. My son had dialed ChildWatch 163, the hotline for citizens who wish to report child abuse! Needless to say, our nanny apologized profusely and had to convince the woman on the other line that there was no abuse taking place and that my son was only playing with the telephone.

This isn't the only time it's happened in my family. Apparently, my cousin Angelica's child Olivia dialed 911. I can only imagine Lic's shock when the cops showed up at her doorstep!

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