Static variable

Imagine you have a magic toy box that can hold anything you put into it. You want to keep track of how many toys you have in the box, so you decide to use a special toy to keep count. Let's call it a counter.

Now, you have many friends who also have magic toy boxes, and they want to use your counter too. Since you don't want them to mess around with your counter, you decide to make it static. This means that there will only be one counter that can be shared by everyone who uses it.

So, when you or your friends put toys in the toy box, the counter goes up. When you take a toy out, the counter goes down. Everyone who uses the counter will see the same number, and there won't be any confusion or mistakes.

In programming, a static variable is similar. It's a special variable that can be shared by multiple parts of a program. It's like a counter that keeps track of something important, such as the number of times a function has been called or the total number of objects in a class.

Instead of having multiple variables that do the same thing, a static variable ensures that there's only one variable that all parts of the program can use. This makes things simpler, more organized, and less prone to errors.