Usually when I am driving NBO somewhere, I am simultaneously breaking up a fight, or telling someone to keep their hands (or feet...or head) to themselves, or asking them to please, please just stop screaming. Occasionally, though, the stars align and there is relative peace in the car. It doesn't happen often, but I try to relish these moments when they do happen. Mainly because it is a reminder that I really do maintain the ability to hear myself think--something that I usually swear I am no longer capable of doing. At all. Ever.
Today, as we were driving home from school, N was talking about her friend Mary. N is always talking about someone, in that stream of consciousness way shared only by six-year-old girls and eighty-five-year-old women with dementia. I really couldn't tell you exactly what she was talking about, because my mind started wandering after she had been talking for seven minutes straight, without taking a single breath. B, however, was apparently paying attention.
"Which one is Mary?" he asked
"You know who she is, B." N informed him, before resuming her story--if you can call eight minutes of stream of consciousness ramblings about Mary, the book fair, and an eraser a "story".
"No, I don't know!" B told her. "Tell me what she looks like".
N informed him that he just saw her the other day, so he knows what she looks like.
"I don't know who she is, N!" B was clearly getting frustrated, "Just tell me! What shape is her head?"
N explained through her laughter that Mary's head was shaped like pretty much everyone else's, so she couldn't describe her to him that way.
B sighed. This was not going well. He obviously just wanted to know what the girl looked like. What was so hard about that?
"OK, " he said, and I thought he was giving up completely, before he added, with complete seriousness, "Then just tell me what color her feet are".
A simple question, really.
I'm just hoping this isn't how foot fetishes begin.
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