Quantity has a quality all its own

Hello Everyone,

I listen to a lot of podcasts. I'm not a big music guy, so most of the time I'm in the car, it's a podcast that's playing. Doing the dishes, laundry, or other household chores? Podcasts keep me company. Arthur's not much of a conversationalist, so I sometimes listen to podcasts at the dog park as well. So I feel I have a bit of authority when a designate a podcast as being particularly good. Dan Carlin's Hardcore History is such a podcast. But this isn't an essay about my listening habits. It's about my weekend at a cabin with a gaggle of children and their attendants (parents). You see, in Carlin's series about the First World War, he used the phrase 'quantity has a quality all its own,' attributed to Napoleon, about the overwhelming force used by the allied nations in that conflict. I use it to describe the 15 children who were at the cabin this past weekend, all between the ages of 1 1/2 to 8. The metaphor seems appropriate: to say that it was at times cacophonous is to say that the ocean is at times breezy. And I'm not even at eye-level with these kids. My roommate, however, was not so fortunate. And he was way, way more popular than I was. Dogs and children share a peculiar understanding of personal space. If they like you, there is no such thing. If they don't, it's a force field. The kids really, really liked Arthur, which meant he didn't have much of a personal bubble. Also, a few of the kids unilaterally decided they and I were in a wrestling match, so I got a bit of that as well. Children also operate with a heightened kind of social magnetism. If one kid likes something and shows enthusiasm, that draws others in. Arthur would often get the attention of not just an individual kid or even two, it was usually none or 5. Or, like 9. There was one area where this worked in his favour though - playing fetch. They all loved throwing the ball for him, and he was happy to bring it back and do it again and again. Watching the kids work out the order of who's turn it is with the ball was fun. I've seen it in other instances with these same kids and you could write academic papers about this kind of thing. Arthur and I share a certain Anglo-Saxon approach to social interaction though. It's why we're such good roommates. As much as I enjoy being in a very full house, and I very much do, we both need a bit of a break from time to time. Fortunately, we were in a rural area, so in the mornings he and I would take a walk up the laneway and into the bush. There was everything he enjoys: deer trails, a running brook, and solitude.

wes