At my friend’s sons school, there was a visit by the local fire station (this was a few years back, probably doesn’t happen now) as part of a youth engagement piece. The firefighters organised a competition between two groups, one of them containing my friend’s son.
The objective was to set up a hydrant (they were shown how), then each group would roll out individual three pieces of hose one after the other, connecting them as they went. Finally, they’d connect a branch/nozzle on the end and shout ‘WATER ON!’, at which point, the firefighters would turn on that hose, allowing the fastest team to soak their rivals. A change of clothes and towels etc. had already been thought about and accounted for.
Anyway, what happened is the first group applied themselves to the task studiously, and commenced rolling out all the allotted hoses. The second group, containing my friends son, only rolled out one hose, and attached the branch straight to that. They called for the water to be turned on, and the bemused, but compliant, firefighters obliged accordingly.
They turned the hose on their rivals, who were still beavering away on unrolling their second hose length at this point, soaking them. When told that their group had lost through disqualification, my friend’s son took one look at the other group, standing their spooning wet, and said, “Maybe so, but it doesn’t look like it to me”.
You can say all you want about following the rules etc., but I don’t think my friend has ever been prouder of her son. She did take him for a big ice cream parlour Knickerbocker Glory as a reward. A good life lesson, in my book.