My ten-year-old asked a question at a restaurant last month that I would never in a million years have asked.
We were finishing dinner at a little place we like, and he'd been watching the kitchen door swing open and shut all night like it was a movie. When the waitress came by, he just went for it: "Can I see the kitchen? Like, how they make everything?"
I started doing the dad thing - buddy, they're busy, we can't just - but the waitress was already grinning. She checked with the cook. And two minutes later my son was standing at the pass in a kitchen that smelled like butter and fryer oil, being shown how the bread gets its stripes, while a line cook let him press the ticket buzzer.
He walked back to the table like a man returning from the moon. And they sent him home with a dessert on the house.
Total cost of the entire experience: one question.
The undefeated champions
Here's the thing I've realized watching my three boys: kids are the undefeated champions of asking.
They ask for the front seat, the extra inning, the sleepover, the cockpit, the dollar, the later bedtime, the bigger slice. They ask strangers what their dog's name is and whether they can pet it. They ask the coach if they can pitch. They ask why about things adults stopped noticing decades ago.
And here's the statistic nobody keeps but every parent knows: they get yeses constantly. Way more than seems mathematically reasonable. My boys have gotten free stuff, behind-the-scenes tours, extra innings, front seats, and the last donut, all on the strength of just... asking.
For a long time I chalked it up to cute. Kids get yeses because they're small and adorable and adults are suckers.
But I don't think that's actually it.
I think kids get yeses because they're the only people left who actually make the ask. The rest of us answer for the other person before they get a vote. We run the whole conversation in our heads - the imposition, the awkwardness, the polite refusal - and then we skip the question entirely, having lost a negotiation that never happened, to a person who never said a word.
A ten-year-old doesn't do any of that. He just lets the waitress answer.
Somewhere between ten and forty, we appoint ourselves the official spokesperson for everyone else's "no." Kids get more yeses for one reason: they still let people answer for themselves.
The audit
Once I saw it in my kids, I started seeing the missing asks in my own life, and it got a little embarrassing.
The guy whose career I admire, who I've never asked to grab coffee - because he's probably too busy. The buddy with the lake place we'd love to visit, unasked - don't want to impose. The favor, the introduction, the "hey, could you teach me that?" - a whole invisible warehouse of things I quietly wanted and never requested, each one pre-rejected by the world's least qualified judge: my own nervous imagination.
I'm not a psychologist, but there's real research on this, and it's delightful. When scientists actually send people out to make requests of strangers, the same result keeps showing up: we underestimate - badly, sometimes by half - how likely people are to say yes. And the flip side is even better: people like being asked. Being asked means being seen - you're the one who knows things, the one with the good taste, the one trusted with the request. Half the time, the person you're scared to bother hangs up the phone feeling ten feet tall.
Which means most of us are walking around protecting people from a burden they'd have enjoyed carrying.
So I've started running a little experiment on myself, in honor of my ten-year-old: when I catch myself wanting something and hear the internal spokesperson warming up - they're busy, it's weird, who am I - I try to just make the ask and let the actual human answer.
The best one so far: I finally asked a musician I'd admired around town for years if he'd ever let me sit in and play sometime. I'd been silently assuming for a decade that real players don't want some doctor noodling along. He texted back in four minutes. "Man, why didn't you say something years ago?"
Years. I'd been sitting on years of music because I'd cast his "no" for him - and I'd cast it wrong.
The math of asking
Here's the part that turned this from a cute observation into something I actually practice.
Yeses compound. One coffee becomes an introduction becomes an opportunity. One "sure, sit in with us" becomes a standing Thursday thing becomes some of the best hours of your month. One kitchen tour becomes a kid who, at ten, already knows in his bones that the world is full of doors that open if you knock - which might be the single most valuable thing he could believe.
And the nos? This is the secret nobody tells you: the nos cost almost nothing. A polite no leaves you exactly where you already were, minus ten seconds. Every "no" I've collected has evaporated by dinner. Meanwhile the unasked questions are the ones that hang around for years, wearing that itchy little coat of what if.
Ask more, and you don't just get more - you slowly repaint your whole picture of the world. It turns out to be a friendlier place than your inner spokesperson has been reporting. People are generous. They like being asked. The kitchen tour was always available.
The bottom line
I'll grant the obvious: ask like a ten-year-old, not like a toddler. Make it easy to say yes, make it easy to say no, and take the no with a smile - the whole game only works if a no costs the other person nothing. Some asks are too big, some timing is wrong, and charm is not a substitute for consideration. My boys, for the record, are also occasionally told to knock it off.
But if you're anything like me, you are nowhere near the too-much-asking line. You're miles on the other side of it, politely wanting things in silence, losing arguments with people who were never consulted.
There's something you've been wanting. Small, probably. A tour of somebody's kitchen. And there's a person who could hand it to you, who has no idea you want it, because the only vote cast so far was the one you cast on their behalf.
Let them answer.
So here's my question for you this week: What's one fun, low-stakes ask you'll actually make this week - and who have you been answering for?
Reply and tell me what happens.
That's all for this week.
See you next Saturday.