For the last three weeks, I have enjoyed conversations with friends, coworkers, and strangers with children.  We have talked about every thing from bed wetting and child leashes to meal preparation and the reasons children make us laugh.  I was reminded that I began blogging in an effort to share anecdotal stories that encourage people who were charged with raising children or supporting anybody raising children.  Somewhere along the way, I took a detour and started writing about a plethora of topics.  This week I decided to get back to the business of little ones.

When my son was very young, my husband asked me why I kept putting the boy in dangerous situations.  My son was the kind of kid who always got himself into some kind of situation.  My husband’s observation was correct because my son often ended up in situations that presented a risk of some sort.  The situation that inspired my husband’s question happened when we lived in Florida.  We had a couch in what we considered our formal living room.  I must note that it was not formal in the same way that my mother’s living room was formal.  Unlike my mother, I allowed people to actually use my living room and sit on the fancy couch.  It was not off limits like the light colored couch my mother had in my childhood living room.  Her living room might as well have had an invisible shock fence at each point of entry because she saved that room for special occasions only.  We could use that room to practice piano lessons, to host guests, and open Christmas gifts.  I remember some family members came to visit and mama made sleeping arrangements for them.  It was a given that the youngest person in the house (who was me) had to give up her bed for adult guests.  When all of the beds and sofas had been assigned, I needed a place to sleep.  I think she would have preferred that I made a pallet on the floor rather than use that couch.  That might have been the moment that I decided that my living room would always be a room that folks could use whenever they wanted to use it.  When we bought out first living room furniture, I selected a couch with vibrantly colored fabric.  I didn’t want our guests to be able to readily determine that my children had free reign in that room like they did all of the other rooms in my house.

My colorful, formal couch sat up against the longest wall in the room and just below a wood framed mirror gifted to me by my mother.  As I recall, I left my son alone for a few minutes to go into my room for some reason.  He must have been two or three years old because he could walk and he was still drinking from a sippy cup.  He used to walk through the house with wide-legged, heavy steps like a giant baby walking over and through a chess board holding pieces carefully placed by two wise strategists.  He was what my people called a “big boned” baby who held that sippy cup clutched in the cradle of his bent left arm when he was meddling with stuff with the right hand.  Otherwise, the sippy cup cycled regularly from his mouth to some space just in front of him as he walked.  As I left my bedroom and walked into the foyer that was between my room and the living room, I saw this big baby balancing himself on the back of that colorful living room sofa with that sippy cup cradled in the bend of his left elbow while he touched the image of his happy, smiling baby face in the mirror.  He was standing perfectly in the center of the back panel of the couch which positioned him at the highest point of the sofa.  It was cute in a scary kind of way because he was looking in the mirror as if admiring his pearly white baby teeth and entertaining the thought of the immeasurable joy he would have if that little boy in the mirror would jump out and play with him.  Was I to scream, “Get down!” or ease into the room to talk him down from the back of the sofa.  I opted for easing into the living room prepared to shift from a slow, quiet tiptoe movement to a sprint if he noticed me easing up behind him.  I had a feeling that his giggle might steal his balance.

That situation turned out fine, but he continued to challenge the limits of child guarding or child proofing the house.  Our Florida house was a two-story house and the kids had rooms upstairs.  Because my son was such a busy body, I decided to use safety gates to block the stairwell to keep my son from coming down the steps in the middle of the night.  The gate worked for a week or so until I figured out that he knew how to maneuver around or over the gate.  I never really figured out how he got beyond the gate or the large pieces of furniture I tried next.  One night, his chubby little hand tapped me on the face.  I opened my eyes and saw his happy baby face and my heart sank with fear.  My expression showed him excitement, but in my head I was asking myself how in the world he was able to get past the safe guards and down a flight of stairs in a dark house to stand in my space all happy about life.  Subsequently, I dug out the baby monitors and the jingle bell necklace and devised a new plan.  I placed part of the baby monitor on a dresser in his room and I hung the jingle bell necklace on his doorknob.  I put the receiver for the baby monitor in my room.  Every night, I read books to my kids so I decided that when story time was done I would give good night kisses then close the door to my son’s room.  There was no way I could have him on those steps in the dark in the middle of the night trying to deliver the “Mommy, I wake!” message to me again.  My strategy worked.  Whenever he opened his door, the bell would ring and I would leap from my sleep and scurry to meet him at the top of the steps.

This kid was my second child and he didn’t express his genius in the same ways that his older sister demonstrated her giftedness.  Her definitions of activity and exploration generally had expected boundaries that didn’t present risk of physical harm to self, others, or things.  The boy, on the other hand, moved through life freely like a kid walking through the candy store as if all of the things in his sight were treats for him to sample.  He had no radar for risk levels, etiquette, or boundaries.  Therefore, he had no need to establish safety protocols or ask for permission. He woke up every morning excited about whatever might be in his path that day and I woke up every morning worried that I wouldn’t be a step ahead of the curious baby wonder or at least right behind him to save him or the thing or person in his line of engagement.

Both my children were inquisitive kids.  Inquisitive children ask a lot of questions and they enjoy and spend their time expanding their minds through exploration.  Kids really love to be busy.  I kept my kids busy and in turn I didn’t get a lot of rest.  I encouraged the families I met over the last few weeks to enjoy the time and the unpredictable nature of life with children.  I told them to keep in mind that it is not the job of grown folks to shield children from living life or to force them to live life just like other people are called to live life.  They are not robots and they generally learn the limits by failing, falling, or repeated redirection.  I advised the parents not to confuse concern for their children with interfering with their children making independent decisions or preventing them from braving new territory.  Although it’s challenging, parents must work hard to serve as observers and coaches.  Parents, don’t get too serious or scared when the children do normal kid stuff.  If you want the kid to play more, don’t lose your mind over grass stains in their pants.  Relax! I can say that my son never worried about getting grass stains in his pants.  He would say, “My mama can wash them.”  If you buy your son a motorized train that he can ride presumably on the heavy duty plastic oval-shaped train track that came in the box with it and you hear him giggling while something is rolling over the tiles in your foyer, don’t lose your mind.  Do what I did:  Relax and laugh at your child’s ingenuity.

A few weeks ago I went into an office supply store shopping for a small shredder for my house.  Of all of the household appliances, I think that my favorite ball coach ranked the shredder at the top of the list just behind the first place vacuum cleaner.  Before confessing to him that I dropped the industrial sized shredder on a concrete surface exactly on the motor (two times), I decided to shop for another one.  I thought that a smaller shredder might prevent the second and fatal drop of his valued household appliance.

It was late morning on a Sunday when I drove to the store.  The weather as a perfect desert hot and dry so I expected folks to be out enjoying the opportunity to literally bake in the sun.  Since sun bathing was not my preferred pastime, I looked forward to what I believed would be a quiet shopping trip in a cool, climate-controlled environment.

When I arrived at the store, I thought it odd that there were more cars in the parking lot than there had been at other times I visited this store.  I also noticed that navigation through the parking lot was more challenging than usual too.  This time, I exercised more caution maneuvering to a vacant space because of all of the children who enjoyed the open spaces like they had found a vast, green, grassy field in which to use their youthful legs to hop, skip, and twirl.  Even though I was aware of the cars and the people distracted by their missions, I still didn’t connect their presence to anything in particular.

I walked into the store expecting a greeter to say welcome to the store as I made my way toward the clearance table (because that’s where any expert shopper starts the process).  To my surprise, there was no clearance table close to the door and no greeter.  All of the folks in red shirts were flitting around with stoic faces closely trailed by shoppers with anxious demeanors.  Some of the anxiety stemmed from excitement about the bright and shiny things all around them.  Others expressed anxiety because they searched for the one random thing that no store in town seemed to have in stock.  Suddenly, I realized that it was time for “Back to School” shopping.  My empty nester life had distanced me from all reminders of this important, yet stressful annual event.  I had missed all of the commercials, all of the signage, and all of the water cooler chats about kids returning to school.

Instead of pivoting and heading back to my car, I continued into the store and embraced the chaos.  I nestled into the wonderful energy of the bright colors and what my father called, “noise-noise.”  He was an educator and he used to say, “There was noise and there was noise-noise.” The “noise-noise” referred to that reverberation of busyness and chatter that existed in a healthy, fruitful learning environment.  As I wrote those words, I understood why my children and I were never built for the traditional parochial school environment.  We needed “noise-noise.”

As I fell deeper into the embrace of children excited about learning, I couldn’t help but be distracted by the bright and shiny things strategically placed near the entrance.  Like a child, I allowed myself to be hoodwinked by the cunning mind trick of the seller.  I walked aimlessly off to the right side of the store in search of nothing.  Over the course of the next hour and a half, I examined the new gadgets and noted the items that transcended decades of school shoppers.  I enjoyed listening to the preschool shopper making selections predicated on colors without considering the potential cost of such limited thinking.  I only hoped that the simplistic thoughts of those children would not be applied to their lives beyond school supply shopping.

Observations of the pre-teen shopper made me pause.  Long gone were the days of school supply shopping lists committed to paper.  These young ones had cell phones!  It wasn’t until I saw a father-son team searching for some random item like it was “the golden ticket” in the candy bar that I realized these school shoppers were paperless.  The son and the father had begun to doubt their memories.  When they couldn’t find the prized marker, the son pulled out his cell phone to refresh their memories.  The concept of decreasing our footprints and being eco-friendly took on new meaning for me.  The electronically recorded school supply list reminded me that it had been a minute since I participated in this “Back to School” ritual.

Although school supply shopping for my grown children looked nothing like this in-store drill, some things remained the same:

• Reading, writing, and arithmetic remain fundamental in the learning process.
• Enthusiasm for learning and instruction is necessary in the educational environment.
• Students come in all ages and must remain students for life.
• Intelligence must overcome ignorance.
• Stable communities are built on involved and inclusive communities.
• Teachers are important leaders and villagers in our communities who need our support.

Whether you have children in the school or not, please don’t miss the opportunity to support schools near you.  Invest your time, your dollars, and your prayers in the children who populate your neighborhoods.  Educate yourself on the things that challenge our children and our schools.  Encourage our children to love learning and dreaming.  Empower our children to use their minds to set visions that take them outside the village so that they can be the first to do something really cool.  Enlighten the other grown folks around you who are too caught up in their own mess to wake up and help you build supportive villages for our kids.

Since I got married twenty-eight years ago, I have moved at least fourteen times.  The first move was mostly personal belongings and hand-me-down furnishings. The most recent move came complete with years of accumulated stuff courtesy of the husband, the kids, and me.  We also owned the things bequeathed to us by folks who wanted a good home for their discarded stuff.

This move demonstrated that stuff multiplies like the two fish and five loaves of bread in the Bible days.  This modern day miracle ought never be documented or repeated.  As I stood and surveyed the accumulated wealth of stuff, I wondered how we had so much stuff after the countless donations, gifting, and re-gifting of things that came with every move.  To our credit, by the time I closed out this move, there was less of everything.  We owned fewer books, less clothing, fewer supplies for school and crafts, and less furniture.  Sifting through the stuff reminded me of the challenges of being a woman of color living in the dryness of Reno.  Based on the number of hair care items in our inventory, I must have bought one of each brand of hair care crème, shampoo, and conditioner I could find in this city.  Additionally, I learned that I devoted a lot of time and money exposing my kids to experiences that promoted artistic and analytical development.  I discovered varied sizes of tap shoes, a clarinet, an oboe, handmade crafts, puzzles, books, a percussion practice kit and a stick bag, and a large stack of piano books.  I found keepsakes from road trips, travels abroad, sports camps, YoungLife camps, and team memorabilia saved from little league, middle school, high school, and club sports teams the kids played on over the years.  I tossed a ring of ribbons from one club volleyball season and the collection of ankle, knee, and wrist braces we have collected and stored in the event we needed them.  I kept jerseys, yearbooks, and special projects completed by the kids like poetry books they wrote, photographs from the photography class one of them took, and the artwork they created.  I also kept a host of children’s books and board games that brought back fun memories of our time together every night reading books and the competitive board game trash talking (and cheating by one who shall remain unnamed).

Although these experiences bring back some great parenting moments, I was reminded that it was easy, at times, to engage in negative self-talk as a parent.  My parenting journey has taken me through wicked turns in my self-evaluation of my strategies and skill sets.  The process of purging the stuff successfully restored my faith in me as a parent and as a villager.  Affirmation felt good to me in the midst of the emotions that came with sorting through my life in boxes and plastic totes.

The process itself sucked because I continually dealt with the difficulties associated with my first move without my kids.  I faced the reality that I have spent almost half of my life devoted to their development and harboring concern for the well-being of the benefactors of all of those games and much of the stuff.  The other very real finding confirmed by the purge was that I benefited immensely from the investment I made in parenting my kids.  The gift of parenting my kids made me better.  The desire to raise self-aware, balanced, global thinkers forced me to be conscious of those traits myself.  The goal of securing a loving, trusting, lifelong relationship with them taught me to remind them that perfection was never the goal and that there was a difference between judgment and constructive criticism.

The purge left me happy that I had given as much of my time and resources to them as I believed I had given them.  I was satisfied that the sacrifice of some of my personal goals was a good thing because I was more available to them when they were younger. I reflected on the time that Mama visited us in Florida and commented to me about how many hours I worked and how many hours my kids needed the care of sitters, day care, and after school care.  She spoke some wisdom into my spirit and encouraged me to consider other options that designated me their primary caregiver.  The decision to stay home with them and forego my career was a tough one, but as I have worked through the boxes and plastic containers I felt proud of my decision and I was proud of my kids. They are certainly my most grand and excellent work product.  The only regrets that I had were the following: 1. That I didn’t log all of the time I spent sitting and waiting for them to finish whatever they were doing while I sat and waited for so many years and 2. That I didn’t count the number of times I drove to school taking stuff they forgot or just needed.  That data would have supported my amazing parenting and likely deemed me a master parent.  It would have also given me something to hold over their heads for the rest of their lives.

Writing Part 3 of the back-to-school tales from my journey proved cathartic for me.  Friday evening, I received a text from my daughter saying that she had been pulled over by a police officer and soon after she stopped her car two other units approached with lights and sirens, parking their cars strategically to prevent her from driving away.  I could tell from her text that she was disturbed by this encounter.  I, too, was disturbed because my beautiful, intelligent, college-educated, honor student daughter had seemingly been mistaken for a drug dealer.  I knew how hard she worked to equip herself to manage her life and live life as a responsible global citizen on the right side of the law.  As I learned more about the encounter, I also felt frustrated, frightened, confused, and humbled all at the same time. My immediate thoughts were about her safety and how she would process this experience.  I have always told my children to call me when they need me.  She tried to call that night, but I was at a ball game cheering on the other members of my family.  I missed her call.  When I looked at my phone and saw the texts about the stop, the number of squad cars that responded to the stop, and that they told her, “We’re looking for guns and drugs” my heart sank.  I quickly replied with a text that said, “Yes sir no sir and get out safe and alive.”

How is it that some things can seem so random and so intentional at the same time?  Was it chance or a part of a larger plan?   For her, the unbelievable moment was a result of a “tail light out.”  Whether random, intentional, chance or an intricate detail in a life plan, I am mandated to find an application of that is unexplainable in order to keep my thoughts under control.  Thoughts driven by unexpected incidents and left to undefined outcomes can take root and give life to branches of fear, anger, and mistrust of people and life, in general.  I am thankful that she made it home safely and that her encounter inspired my writing.

As my grown children embark upon another year of higher education, I am reminded that back-to-school means whimsical anecdotal stories from my journey as well as lessons in safety that need to be told.  Regardless of the age of the child, people who love children are generally concerned about their safety.  Caretakers of younger children have the ability to control the environments of their children from the car seats and carriers to the play groups and electronic parental controls.  I can remember the introduction of computers and the internet as teaching mediums for children.  My children were very young when we bought our first personal computer for the house.  I was just laughing with some college students last week about dial up internet access.  I can remember my kids tying up the phone line for hours playing “The Suite Life of Zack and Cody” and other educational games online.  My husband would be so aggravated when he finally got the phone to ring at the house.  We always kept the computer in a location central to family life and I always asked other families about the use of the internet in their homes when my children were allowed to visit.  My children didn’t have cell phones of their own until they turned thirteen because I knew I was not that parent who would consistently check their contact list or their use history.  If you are concerned about the virtual places your children visit and who has access to your children, you need to think through the plans of use and the parental controls available to you.  I gave my kids access to devices gradually and I selected plans that I could manage.  Additionally, I selected plans I could explain reasonable and rationally.  Even after giving the cell phones, I limited picture mail and data because I needed to control the types of images they sent and received.  Moreover, data was expensive at that time.  If you have decided to give your children access to electronic devices, think about why you are allowing such a privilege and whether the range of access given is warranted.  Be ready for the “But, everybody has one” argument.  The truth is everyone does not have one and everybody’s mama ain’t paying for the one at your house.  This is the time where your parenting has to make sense and when you must not be afraid to be the parent and not long to be the best friend of the child.

When the kids got older, there was less control over their surroundings because I could not be with them at all times.  The older the children got the more independent decisions they made about their whereabouts and who they decided to associate with from one moment to the next.  The practice of using rational thoughts about access to new places and people became a part of the decision making process when my kids needed to make decisions in my absence.  My practices were live demonstrations for my kids which made me think about my safety ideas and practices.  I made sure that there was support for the safety decisions I implemented and not just me hating on their friend group or living out pain from my scars.  I told my kids that I had scars and I provided them stories from my past to explain my apprehension about things they wanted to do or the places they wanted to go.  My mother taught me this lesson by example.  She taught me that is was completely fine to give rational reasons for apprehension.  My mother never learned to swim so she feared large bodies of water, including swimming pools.  She told me about her fear when I asked her to let me go swimming.  Instead of saying “No, never because it’s too dangerous” she enrolled me in swimming lessons at the local YMCA.  Now, she didn’t have the same approach with the flight lessons my daddy wanted for him and me.  She was also afraid of planes, but flight lessons were a lot more expensive than swimming lessons and my father had a habit of wanting to own the things he loved.  I think she was afraid, but she was not dumb enough to let him grow passionate about planes and feel the need to own one of those.

Once, my son told me that I was just being unreasonable for not letting him go “places.”  I asked him how many times over the years I had actually told him that he could not go someplace.  There was a long thoughtful pause by him which translated to a silent victory for me.  I reminded him that I rarely told him that he couldn’t go places.  I always challenged my children to know the plan so that they could be in control of the situation or environment.  I always challenged my children to know who would be there, what they planned to do there, how long the thing would last, and how they would get out of the situation if an retreat or escape was needed to get them out of the situation.  When they couldn’t answer those questions, I would set clear curfews and rules about use of electronics and cars.  In general, the curfews would remain earlier than later, a dead battery was not an acceptable excuse for not responding to my texts or calls, and nobody was allowed in the car they were borrowing from their parents without the explicit permission of me or their father.  I also suggested plans for an exit or departure, if needed.  Often the safe route out was to call home or text me. They became disciplined about evaluating the people and the things they invite into their spaces now that they do not live with me.

My Big Mama used to say, “When they are young they’re on your lap and when they’re old they are on your heart.”  She was a wise woman and her statement is true.  As a parent of little kids, it was easy to say “No, no, Don’t do that” and remove them from the dangerous thing.  However, older children meet correction and safety prevention decisions with resistance because they learn about their ability to be free thinkers and they discover the gift of free will.  Being the heavy was tough, but I think it paid dividends in that they learned to think about their own safety. In addition, I think that my children heard the safety messages so often that the messages became a part of them like the message to “Stop, drop, and roll” during a fire drill.  I often remind students that their loved ones really only want to know that they are safe and ok.  I can say that children generally want to know that someone cares about them and their safety even if their response to it doesn’t communicate they appreciate the concern from grown folks in their lives.  Years later I hope they do what my kids have both done – call home and say thank you for caring enough to set some healthy boundaries.  I heard a pastor say once that a parent should limit the use of the word “No” for those special moments when you really need to prohibit a dangerous encounter.  You don’t do your children a service by eliminating every potential threat.  I used to tell my kids that I was a safety net for them and that as long as I was there they should take risks and expect help getting up or for someone to brace their fall.   Be careful in developing your safety plans that you find the balance between protecting your children from danger and allowing your children to experience healthy exploration that allows them to practice making independent choices and decisions for which accountability for the same belongs solely to them.

My school begins the fall semester Monday and I am not ready.  Last week was filled with trainings and things designed to get students and faculty ready for the academic year.  However, getting everyone else geared up and feeling excited about the possibilities ahead meant a lot of time away from my office.  Campus training for me meant a very real confrontation with the truth that there were only 24 hours in each day.

When I live life trying to squeeze more things into the 24 hour day than should reasonably be done in a 24-hour period, the possibility exists that I will overlook something or respond to a question without thinking through the logic or reason for the question being asked.  Such a quandary is not unique to higher education.  I found myself rethinking those spontaneous conversations with my kids when they were younger.  I was reminded of the times when they asked a question, I answered the question, then later realized I should have asked a follow up question to the seemingly simple question.

My thoughts about spontaneous questions asked by my children took me back to a time when my son was in the fourth or fifth grade and I was a stay-at-home mom.  Most people believed that my role as a stay-at-home mom was the easiest job ever, but it was one of the most difficulty jobs I ever had in my life.  First of all, the job had no start time or end time.  Secondly, I felt compelled to volunteer for everything at school and in the community to demonstrate my serious commitment to parenting.  There was also a part of me that served because I felt pressured to serve the schools and community youth groups to demonstrate to “them” that I wasn’t just sitting at home watching soap operas and napping.  The truth was that I loved doing both of those things and I missed them both when full time work outside the home defined my life.  I celebrated those who worked as stay-at-home parents and found time to steal away from everyone else’s expectations and do either of those things. There was benefit to being entertained by an imaginary messy community of people who ran major companies even  though none of them had any educational or professional qualifications that made them competent to run major companies.  There was something addictive about watching fiction play out on a screen featuring people who found ways to destroy relationships on a regular basis.  Don’t ask me why I missed those shows, but some days I just did and still do.  My naps, on the other hand, were critical to my existence.  My naps provided that boost I needed to get through the evenings of sporting events.  My naps enabled me to stay awake to supervise homework sessions after dinner.  My naps were also  especially necessary when the homework detail came late at night after the older kid was done with her matches at school.

Well, I provided all of the back story to help explain the next story.  Somehow I found ways to fill my daily calendar with activity that kept me out of the house.  My busy schedule made people think I worked outside the home except that I rarely dressed the part.  My self-imposed hectic life often caused me to be distracted and therefore not a very good listener.

One evening when the kids and I finally made it home from the day’s activities, we finished dinner and the kids took to their areas to do some homework.  Great!  It was then that I could clean the kitchen and organize a few things for the next day.  As much as I liked to say I was excellent at multi-tasking, I honestly struggled with maintaining two conversations at the same time.  More specifically, it has always been a challenge for me to text and have a verbal conversation simultaneously.  It has always been challenging for me to have a verbal conversation and type an email at the same time.  That day I learned that I had a newly found limitation: focusing on the details of anything and answering a question.  While I was busy doing something in the kitchen, my son was having some discussion about his hand held electronic game.  He was not permitted to play the game until he finished his homework and the homework was not completed so the conversation about the game charger had no relevance for me.  He said he knew that he couldn’t play, but he needed his charger so that he could charge the battery and it would be ready to play later.  “Oh, ok,” I thought and kept doing whatever I was doing.  He vanished into another space in the house as did the thought about his hand held game.

If the kids didn’t need my help with homework, I would finish cleaning the kitchen, ponder meals and snacks for the next day, start a load of laundry, then sit and do the puzzles in the newspaper or read a book.  If I wasn’t needed, I would check on the kids periodically then return to something I wanted to do.  At some point in the evening, there was more talk about a lost charger and since I was never asked for my charger I didn’t focus on the conversation.  I learned to keep my chargers close because members of my family tend to lose their chargers and automatically default to “sharing” mine.  Because my kids, especially the boy, have “borrowed” so many electronic devices and chargers and then failed to return them to their rightful locations, I have always selectively ignored requests to use my chargers or devices.  I gave birth to the children who told their father that “Mama needs an iPad” when iPad’s were first introduced.  Then, before he could figure out the meaning of iPad they added,  “with Wi-Fi!”.  After convincing their father that I needed this device, they hijacked it for nearly three years except for times when they were playing on a court or a field.  As a result, I learned to ignore their talk about electronics and hold my devices and charges extremely close.

I was proud of myself for protecting my chargers that evening.  I believed that I taught the curious, active one a lesson in responsibility.  I believed that I demonstrated excellence in parenting.  Both kids finished their assignments and we all went to sleep.  We woke up the next morning rushing to get dressed and into the car.  I was taking them to school and afterwards rushing off to some meeting I scheduled in the community.  Everything seemed normal for a hurried family getting off to school except that the boy was dressed first and excitedly rushed to be first to get into the car.  I grabbed my purse, the planner, and my snacks and ran out of the door into the garage.  I pushed the garage door opener on the wall as I raced past it toward the driver’s door.  Having the garage door opening as I got settled into the car would surely save me a few minutes and get me out of the driveway sooner.  I put the key into the ignition and gave the reminder for everyone to put on their seat belts.  I turned the key and there was silence.  There was no motor attempting to turn over and not even a click of a busted alternator.  There were no flickering lights on the dashboard or overhead.  There was nothing.

Then, I remembered the question: “Mom, can I get your keys?” I also remembered with shocking regret the answer: “Sure!”  I was certain the night before that the boy needed the keys because he left a book in the car.  It turned out that the master chess player instead was working to remedy the mystery of the missing wall charger for his hand held game.  Although the wall charger was misplaced, the smart one knew exactly where to locate the car charger for the hand held game.  All he needed the night prior was a car battery to charge the dead game battery.  Genius!  Ask mama for the key, plug in the game all night in the car using the power from her car battery, and viola!  Game time!

That day he learned that it was possible to “make the car battery go dead.”  I learned that it can be very important when dealing with the developing prepubescent mind to take a short break and ask a follow up question or two or three.