I am in Korea with the family for the first time this week, and as I sometimes do while traveling, I revisit a Sundays Are For Sebastian. This comes from about eleven years ago when Seba was six.

Sebastian is my six-year old and he says some of the funniest things–we have no idea where he gets his material since his mother and I are rather boring, serious people.

I was helping Sebastian with his Kumon math (have I mentioned he is half-Korean?), which was focused on subtraction.

He was having trouble with subtracting a single digit number from a double-digit number, so I offered him a hint:

“If both numbers are even, the answer will be even. If both numbers are odd, the answer will also be even. If there is one odd number and one even number, the answer will be odd.”

Me: “Does that help?”

Seba nodded, smiled, and walked off to complete the problems.

A few minutes later, I checked his work, and he made numerous errors.

Me: “Did you remember what I told you?”

Seba: “Yes.”

Me: “So why did you make so many mistakes?”

Seba: “I have no idea what odd and even mean.”