Left

 I'm waging a lengthy campaign against a wasp colony that is somehow both inside and outside the house.  Outside they are constantly coming and going, bumping into the siding of my house as they maneuver between the gutter and the house to wherever they're all living.  Inside the house they appear in ones or twos over the course of several hours.  I kill them with paper towels, wadded to keep from getting stung.  An hour or two later, two more take their place.  Over the past two weeks I've killed maybe 30 wasps IN MY HOUSE.  I have no idea where they're coming from.  

Elliott possibly knows his right hand from his left.  He'll be two and a half years old next week.  He walked with me outside to 'help' pull weeds and water plants on the hillside.  Is that an unclear sentence?  Are you thinking he's pulling water plants and weeds?  That was not my intention.  Anyway...We had a retaining wall extended there about a year ago and all the grass is still dead so the ground leading up to the hill is like hard-packed dirt and it's a little slippery to walk on.  I was carrying something.  In my left hand and he was carrying something in his left hand, but I was reaching over his head so that I could hold his right hand in mine as we walked down the slope.  

It was sort of an awkward hand-hold, since my arm reach all the way over him to hold the arm furthest from me.  And at one point he looked up and said, "Dadda, can you hold my LEFT hand?"  Then he transfered the little toy rake from his left hand to his right and held his left hand out to me.  

I can REMEMBER struggling with left and right as late as kindergarten.  My mom would label my cowboy boots left and right with nail polish on the soles so that I knew which was which.  And maybe that was the struggle...which BOOT was the right boot and which was the left.  But I know I was still working out that whole left/right thing when I was 4 or 5.  So I was borderline stunned.  Also a tad skeptical.  

We walked down the slope into the grass and put our 'tools' away in the shed.  As we got ready to go into the house I hunkered down in front of him so I was centered and asked him if he could give me his left hand.  And he did.  Still a bit skeptical, but amazed.  

We tried it again a few hours later and he gave me his right hand.  Meh...he still knows there's a difference between left and right, and gets it correctly 2 out of 3 times...

Fun stuff.