. . . or how to catch, keep and cherish time with your kids.
Somewhere along last Tuesday, or maybe while retrieving socks from the dryer last night, I must have been in a particularly agreeable mood while coasting on autopilot. Unbeknownst to me, I etched in stone an irrefutable truth that has since become my son’s mantra. Since I blindly answered in the affirmative, the following paradigms have since shifted in our backyard’s universe:
Cars with spoilers are faster than those without. Obviously. (Although my first car, a Fiat, had a spoiler; but we are splicing hairs here.)
However, once you add some layers to this proposition, you’ll find yourself chasing your sanity all the way down the rabbit’s hole. As in:
Race cars are faster than muscle cars.
A muscle car with a spoiler is faster still.
Monster trucks trump muscle and race cars if the latter don’t have spoilers.
Given these “facts,” who wins the race?
Why any of these vehicles would even compete against one another is not debatable. This is where my son’s resolute conviction neatly clashes with my complete lack of automotive knowledge and my ineptitude for multitasking is exposed.
Since I walked into this “fact-finding” discussion unprepared, I got tangled in a web of irrefutable half-truths that counter everything my son has ever learned from Team Hot Wheels books.
So what’s the lesson in all of this?
Since life seems to happen in the blink of an eye or a swig of coffee, I learned to never distractedly confirm anything while my head’s in the dryer.
Always stop, drop and Google first.
I also realized that I ought to live in the moment more often, sans clean socks, if necessary.
(Note to self: Take “logical” thinking above, package and sell word problem to an LSAT test center.)
Marion Kase is a Berks County, PA mom of two. This post is adapted from her blog, Helicopter-Caterpillar. 
