OOTS #1259 - The Discussion Thread

[bunsen_h]

I'd argue that based on the empirical evidence at his disposal, Roy would probably dismiss that concern (but, perhaps, not with a comment containing the phrase "dull efficiency" this time around).

I can easily imagine Sunny and Elan, off having fun, tossing around ideas for how to surprise everybody in helpful ways. For narrative reasons, this will only make a big difference if they come back and tell everyone that they have some secret plans to help. Because you can't have something like that in a well-written story unless it's foreshadowed.

I would not thought Minrah would need to distracted by counting buttons. She is so active and strong willed that I think she would have been training with the soldiers and daring anyone to tell her not to!

There's an age range where sorting buttons is feasible but the soldiers wouldn't want her underfoot. Even assuming that there are classes and activity sessions for children, there may well not be 24-hour child care available, so Minrah's Nana would find her an absorbing activity at home.

I recall that my mother had a big jar of buttons, many of them snipped from old clothes that were about to be thrown out, or repurposed as fabric or rags. I don't remember being tasked with sorting them, though that would have been an excellent activity for me. Once. I would probably have done the sorting more quickly than anyone expected, and then insisted that the buttons be stored in such a way as to preserve the order.

EDIT: I did, at one point, have a jar of pennies, which I won at a Cub Scout meeting by guessing the number of pennies. I'm not certain that I sorted them by age, but I definitely went through the jar and separated out the really old ones.