Last night I was returning from a function with Jr and DP in the truck. They are never able to sit and entertain themselves unless they have some electronic device. I did not allow them to bring anything so they were bored. When they are bored they always want to play some game, but I have to participate in these games. The alphabet game, start with A and name an item that starts with A from whatever the subject is. Foods: A Apple, B Beats, etc. The game continues going from one person to the next. Or the College game. I name a college and they tell me the mascot. The state game; I name a state and they tell me the capital. The math game: I give them math problems and they solve them. So Jr should be able to do two digit adding and subtracting and Dp should know multiplication and division from 12 down. They mastered this a long time ago, so we do simple multiplication and division for Jr and I ask DP hard two digit multiplication problems usually. So I asked Jr what 9 * 7 was. He thought and thought and then said 62. I corrected him and told him it was 63. Now DP can't help himself when Jr is thinking. So he states, I know a trick for the nines. After Jr got it wrong, DP starts telling him the trick. Here is the trick. Hold up your ten fingers. Fold down the finger starting from the left that goes with the number times 9. In this case it is 7. The tens number is the amount of fingers to the left of the folded finger and the ones number is the number of fingers to the right of the folder finger. So DP says, "fold down the seventh finger and the six to the left are the first number and the three to the right are the second number." We continue with the game. A short time later, I ask Jr another nines multiplication problem. This time it was 9*9. DP says, you know how to do this and Jr replies "yeah fold down the 7th finger and blah blah blah and blah blah blah". That pretty much sums up the difference in these two. One is serious and has to know the answer and the other one doesn't have a care in the world. Any way, I laughed so much we had to stop the game. Even DP laughed after a few minutes.
So often times I think that I am wasting my time talking to these subjects. I believe that either they don't hear me or don't care. Nothing I seem to say gets through. However, every now and then, some thing they do reminds me that I am making an impact. One such thing happened last weekend. I was going somewhere and it was early. DP was up as usual playing on my iPod in the living room. So after taking a shower and putting on my shorts and socks, I realized the shorts I had on wouldn't work for where I was going. So I took them off and realized the shirt and shorts I wanted to wear were in the laundry room in my clean basket. So I walked out to the laundry room to get them in just my undewear and socks. Calm down ladies, I know you are picturing me in matching grey underwear and socks as you read this. SuperMom is probably rolling her eyes as she reads it however. As I pass DP in the living room, he looks up and says "That is quite the look". Now if you don't realize it, that is the exact comment I would have made and have made to him many of times. So you see at that moment, I just smiled and thought "they are listening". I was very happy to hear him say those few words. It means he gets my sense of humor (or at least he knows it is supposed to be funny). If he would have started the comment with Well Sir and said "Well Sir, that is quite the look", I would have lost it. |
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April 2018
CategoriesAuthorPracticing medical physicist trying to raise three kids in the south. |