A Child's Prayer

What do kids pray for these days? Have you listened? I'm sure their prayers are far far different than they were 90 years ago, especially when one was a younger child in a family of ten children. I got an insight into life back then earlier this week. It was a different time, with different values. I can't imagine something like this from a modern kid.

It was Sunday morning, and my dad was sitting in his chair, a bit tired from getting up (early - DST just started, an hour sleep lost), and napping before getting breakfast. He started mumbling in his sleep, and suddenly switched to actual speech, apparently along the same lines. I had been going to get up and fix him breakfast, when what I heard held me riveted in my chair.

Later conversation with him revealed that he'd just had another of those dreams where he thinks he's just died, but that was later. What I heard now was him talking to his God, likely starting as an appeal for his afterlife, and morphing into something else. Somewhere in his brain he had become a little child again, and this was part of the prayer he offered:

"God, help me to be a good boy, and don't let me be a miser. ...Thank you God for helping me be good, and I'd like to get a new plaything once a year."

While getting him his breakfast, marveling over what I'd just heard, I started wondering: what would be a good "plaything" for him these days?