15. Tings

Walking up the stairs to go to bed, Charlie said, urgently, ‘Where are my tings?’

I didn’t realise he had trouble with the ‘th’ sound. Cute. It’s cute the way he gets things wrong.

But you have to try to correct him. It's your job.

‘What things?’ I said, and he said, ‘My tings. I left them downstairs.’

He ran back downstairs and returned with two plastic bottle lids, one orange, one blue.

‘These are my tings,’ he explained. He let me hold the orange one.

With a ting, what you have to do is, you press it against your chest. It’s hard to get the position right. It’s not just anywhere on your chest, it’s quite high, just below your throat I think, although I could have that wrong. Charlie’s the person to talk to about that. It’s safest to check with him, actually, each time you use your ting, because getting the position right is kind of the essence of the ting.

Anyhow, so you press your ting against your chest and then you wait a moment. That’s it, really. You just hold it there, wait, and then you put it down. That’s your ting.