Hope for the future?

I’m a fan of lateral thinking puzzles, and now my children like them too.
You know the kind of thing – a man, a puddle of water and a measuring tape.

The children were reading them out to each other, when Ben was offered this little gem…

A man and his son are in a car crash. The father is killed and the child is taken to hospital gravely injured.
When he gets there, the surgeon says, ‘I can’t operate on this boy – for he is my son!!!’
How can this possibly be?

If you don’t know the answer, stop and think.

If you do…

I remember a time when I found this a tough one to answer.
But Ben (who’s ten) said –

“The dad’s dead, so the surgeon must be his mum. What’s so hard about that?”

What a star, unsullied by the preconceptions of a previous generation.

It seems my hard work and indoctrination has had some impact since the day he said on the way to school –
“But a woman can’t be prime minister.”