I turned the key in the ignition. Click.
My four-year-old son looked up at me. “What’s wrong?”
“We have to jump it, Aeric.”
Popping the hood seemed like a teachable moment. I waved Aeric over and he climbed up onto the bumper.
“That’s the motor,” I said. “It’s what makes the truck go.”
He hopped back down and sauntered off, mumbling, “But not today.”
We all started as crumb-crunchers. You’d think their minds wouldn’t be mysteries to us. Ha! I used to jot down some of the doozies my kids threw down. I’ll share from time to time.
Aeric, age 9 | Cass, age 5 | Angela, age redacted
Aeric scraped food from his plate into the dog bowl. Cass fed the dog from the table. I warned her that we didn’t feed the animals until we were all finished.
“But Aeric got to feed the dog,” Cass said.
“Only because I didn’t catch him first.”
When I wasn’t looking, she fed the dog again. Angela saw it and scolded her. “What were you just told?”
Cass looked perplexed. “But Daddy didn’t catch me!”
Pictured: Clay art at a family reunion.
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