Category Archives: Articles Archive

For the most part, I loved growing up as a second child. Sure, I din’t get to play sports or join the band (because, “we tried that with your sister, and it didn’t work out,”), but, in general, the advantages far outweighed the disadvantages. For instance, I didn’t have a curfew (because, “we tried that with your sister, and it didn’t work out,”). With my kids, however, I think things might be turning out differently.

Half of the fun of being the second (or third, fourth or even fifth) child is the anonymity—you get away with so much more because your parents tend to forget you’re there. Not literally, of course—the dirty towels and ever decreasing supply of frozen pizzas make sure of that—but quite often figuratively. While the first child is busy getting chewed out for not calling when they stayed after school late to work on their science project, the second child is sneaking in the back door after spending a week on the road touring with Rancid.

Okay, maybe that’s an exaggeration, but the point is the second child tends to get away with a lot more than the first child. A lot more. And not just because dealing with a strong-willed first born tends to wear parents out (although there is that, too). No, the reason seconds get away with so much more is that they have learned the subtle art of lying by omission. And how did they learn this? By watching their older siblings try it the other way—and fail.

A first born child will argue about their curfew. Bitterly. Passionately. Endlessly. They will produce graphs, and statistics, and testimonials, all designed to get you to change your mind and allow for just one more measly hour. A second child won’t ever need to do this, because a second child will avoid the problem entirely by simply neglecting to tell you they were going out in the first place.

It is amazing to me that so many firstborn children end up going into politics, because they tend to be the worst at lying and sneaking around. I’m not saying they don’t try their best—they do—it’s just that they’re not very good at it. Or at least not as good as their younger siblings.

I think it probably has something to do with the way different children tend to regard conflict—or, more importantly, the way the oldest child tends to relish it. I know that when it comes to my own children, there are times that I am convinced my oldest, Clementine, has changed her beliefs just to have something we can disagree about.

Clyde, on the other hand, is not a fan of disagreement. In typical second child fashion, he tends to avoid conflict by simply avoiding the person he has a conflict with—usually me. Which, as a second child, should work out for him. Unfortunately, however, Clyde failed to get the memo about second children being somewhat invisible—if Clyde is in the house, you know it. And yet, he still gets away with more than his sister ever did, because he overcompensates for his lack of invisibility by relying on another one of those traits that is more common in second children: charm. (Some would argue that charm is just a side effect of being a better liar, and they wouldn’t be wrong about that. Being charmed is another another way of being lied to—one so enjoyable that we don’t really mind it.)

It will be interesting to see what happens to Clyde’s second child traits in the next few months, when his sister leaves the state for college and he inherits the tile (Rank? Throne? Millstone around the neck?) of being “first born.” Early reports suggest that he is going to take over both roles, which would make him aggressively sneaky.

Save me.

If there was one word that I could permanently remove from my children’s vocabulary, it would be will. Specifically when it is coupled with the word I, as in I will. Technically I guess that means I would be permanently removing two words from their vocabulary, but since one of those words just so happens to be one of their absolute favorite words of all time, I think I’ll just stick with the one. Besides, if I got rid of I then that would mean I’d have to miss out on all of those times I get to hear them say I already did it. And by all of those times, I mean both of them.

Here’s how things usually progress in my house. I ask them to do something. They respond by saying, I will. A certain amount of time passes. I ask them if they have completed the task yet, and they respond, once again, with I will, this time with more emphasis on the will than the I. This process is repeated over and over again until I either physically stand over them and use my powers of concentrated nagging to get them to accomplish said task, or I give up and go to bed, exhausted by the hours long struggle. If it is the latter, then the usual outcome is that I wake up in the morning, ask them if they have done what I asked, and am rewarded with I forgot.

At which point the process begins again, although the second time around it is much more likely to end in the first scenario than the second.

In many ways I imagine that this is what life must be like for a nurse on a concussion ward (if there is such a thing). You annoy your patients by waking them every few hours to ask them questions that, to you, are relatively simple: what’s your name, who’s the President, what year is this (did you finish that science project yet?), and they either reply with an answer that satisfies you or one that worries you enough that you call in the big guns. (In the case of the nurse, this would be a doctor.) Except, I guess it’s not exactly like a concussion ward, because in my case there is no one else to call—in this scenario I am both the doctor and the nurse. (So I guess it’s really only like a concussion ward in the sense that 1) I am annoying them, and 2) they’re kind of annoying me, too.)

Also, there’s a difference in that, even if the concussion patients really, really wanted to get better, they still couldn’t. The couldn’t just will away their concussions. They couldn’t make the mature, rational, reasonable decision to simply not have a concussion anymore, thereby being allowed to go home. They would if they could, I’m sure: certainly no one enjoys being badgered every two hours. No one enjoys being woken up and harassed. And yet, they can’t get away from it.

My children, on the other hand, could. And yet, they still don’t.

All it would take for them to be released from the tyranny of my incessant nagging (followed by badgering, chastising, lecturing, and finally, shaming) is for them to actually do what I am asking them to do, when I am asking them to do it. That’s it. Don’t like getting bothered by a nurse every two hours? Tough luck. Don’t like getting bothered by me? Simply do your assignment (or chore).

Of course, maybe it’s me who is missing the point. Maybe the extended have yous and I wills are some kind of warm up for them, the verbal equivalent of stretching before a race. Great: now I sound like the one who has a concussion.

It has been said that horses sweat, men perspire, and ladies glisten. I would like to add one more subject to this equation: teenage boys drip.

No one sweats more than a teenage boy. I don’t know why: maybe it’s the byproduct of them turning those six pork chops they had for dinner into a two inch overnight growth spurt (in much the same way that twenty tons or so of carbon emission is the byproduct of using coal to power a small city overnight.) Or maybe it’s just excess energy being converted into excess stink. Or maybe it’s an unholy alliance between the teenagers of the world and the laundry soap manufacturers. Regardless of the cause, it’s the effect that bothers me. Because the effect is, to put it mildly, gross.

It doesn’t help that it always catches me off guard. As a lady who barely even glistens, I am just not expecting to be assaulted with somebody else’s fluids on a regular basis. I am not expecting to kiss my son on the cheek over an hour after the end of his dance performance only to have my lips slide right off. I am not expecting to have my son crawl in bed with me for a goodnight hug after practice and have my question of “Did you just take a shower?” be answered with, “No, not yet,” as an absolutely soaking wet head is laid upon my cheek. (I’ve also tried asking if it’s raining, if he was participating in a dunk tank and if there was an earthquake I perhaps missed that left us with beachfront property, but no matter how increasingly desperate my questions get he just won’t take the hint and give me a pity lie.)

It’s not that I’m adverse to the idea of sweat, exactly. Trust me, if Channing Tatum wanted to rub his sweaty head on my cheek after dancing for an hour, I would be completely on board with that. Completely. But when it comes to my son it’s a different matter entirely.

Maybe it’s just a matter of the amount. And I don’t just mean the amount of sweat at any one time (which is actually quite impressive), but the amount of fluid that Clyde has shared with me altogether over the course of his lifetime. Remember, we’re talking about a boy here, and as anyone who has ever changed a baby boy’s diaper can tell you, there are a lot of golden shower moments involved. A lot. Add to that the fact that Clyde was just about the pukiest baby I have ever seen, and what you end up with is me having worn approximately a gallon or so of Clyde over the course of our lives together.

At this point the only way I could imagine another creature topping this record would be if I got a job as a trainer at Sea World and consistently played the straight man in all of those “wacky misbehaving orca” shows. (This is a prospect that is only moderately more appealing than raising children because, apparently, it’s entirely okay to beat the animals at Sea World, while beating your children is generally frowned upon. Even when they sweat on you excessively.)

Perhaps one day I will get to the point where I am as blasé about Clyde sweating on me as I once was about him puking on me—there came a time in his babyhood when neither he nor I would even twitch after the first puke of the day. After all, what’s the point of changing your shirt if you know there’s at least two more puking episodes coming up?

Who knows? Maybe I’ll soon get to feel that way about being used as a sweat towel, too. I can’t wait. On second thought, scratch that: yeah, I can.

It has always made sense to me that white t-shirts come in packs of three (or more). After all, in a world of coffee, red wine, and bloody noses, the notion that a white shirt will be staying white for any length of time is simply ludicrous. It is just not going to happen. And t-shirts manufacturers understand this. They even capitalize on it. Which is both clever for them and helpful for us. I only wish the manufacturers of white dress shirts felt the same way. Because if they did it would save me a lot of last minute trips to the department store.

First, let me point out that virtually every school event my children have ever participated in lists “white shirt” as a requirement (the only exception is when the dress code is “black shirt,” which you think is going to be better, until you realize that there is no lint brush in the world that can save a shirt past a certain point.) And so, knowing about the “white shirt” requirement, I always make every effort to secure said shirt well ahead of time, either by buying a new one or retrieving an old one and washing it. Inevitably, however, despite all of my planning, the night of the event arrives and the “white shirt” will be no longer white.

It doesn’t matter where I keep the white shirt, either: even hanging it in my own closet is no guarantee of safety. (At this point I doubt it could be saved by placing it in the same vault with the world’s last known specimen of smallpox, which is, as I understand it, carefully guarded deep in the bowels of the earth somewhere in a clean room.) It simply doesn’t make a difference: no matter how carefully I guard the once pristine white shirt, arrival at the concert venue (or dance performance, or award ceremony), always reveals a stain of some sort in some very prominent location. Always. It’s like the scene in every caper movie ever made, where the bad guys open up the vault only to find that the diamonds are already gone—the hero has somehow managed to sneak in and take them. My question here though is both how did a simple shirt end up playing the part of the diamonds, and why did I end up as the villain? (Don’t let my kids answer that.)

It seems to me that the kindest thing the people who organize these events could do would be to set up some kind of white shirt dispensing system in the lobby. It wouldn’t even have to be manned: a vending machine would be fine (although, with my luck the last size small white shirt would get stuck leaning against the glass the same way the last Mars bar always seems to do). Just think about it: instead of selling flowers at the performance for five dollars a piece, they could sell white shirts for twenty. (Or thirty. Probably even fifty. If they were clever—and mercenary—they would raise the price the closer it got to the actual performance.)

Or they could simply change the dress code from “black pants and white shirt” to “pajama bottoms and a dirty t-shirt,” and the problem would be solved. Don’t worry: I’m not suggesting that everyone on stage actually be dressed like hobos; I’m just saying that if that were to be the new dress code then dirty t-shirts would become as scarce as white shirts used to be, leaving everyone no choice but to show up in their nicest attire. It’s reverse shirt psychology. Or something like that.

If nothing else at least it could keep me and all of the other mothers out of the dress shirt aisle at eight pm on a Friday night.

One of the best things about being human is that, occasionally, we get the chance to reinvent ourselves: we change jobs, or relationships, we move to a new city, learn a new language, take up a new exercise routine. We dye our hair, exchange belief systems, swap out old friends for new ones. Heck, sometimes we even change our names and genders. It is glorious, and exciting, and liberating, and terrifying, and it is a lot to ask of both ourselves and the people who know us. Which is why, for the most part, we only make these big changes once or twice in our lifetimes, if at all.

Unless, of course, you are in middle school.

Having raised two children through the age of middle school, and having been a middle schooler myself, I feel confident in asserting the claim that no one ever starts high school as the same person they were when they finished middle school.

Logically, of course, this doesn’t make sense. After all, only a few months pass over the summer. And yet, there is something about those few months, those particular few months, that must be revelatory.

Maybe it’s the fact that, for the majority of us, middle school is one long mistake, in every sense of the word. We choose the wrong friends, the wrong fashions, the wrong attitude and the wrong opinions. I know that, personally, looking back on the person I was in middle school I see someone I barely recognize, let alone would ever want to associate with. In short, an embarrassment. Someone I barely acknowledge ever have existing. And someone I would be insulted to be accused of still being today.

And yet, so often, that is exactly what happens. Not to me. Not anymore. But I see it time and time again with those who are much closer in age to the middle school monsters they once were. People look at the fourteen year old, or even eighteen year old in front of them and refuse to allow for the possibility that they may not be the snotty twelve year old they once were.

I think it was George Bernard Shaw who said it best: “The only man I know who behaves sensibly is my tailor; he takes my measurements anew each time he sees me. The rest go on with their old measurements and expect me to fit them.”

I suppose I have been thinking about these changes so much lately because, in preparation for my daughter’s high school graduation, I have been going through the pictures of her when she was in middle school. For, you know, the sake of embarrassing her. Because that’s basically my job.

I’ve found some great material. The Twilight phase. The asymmetrical hair that never met a brush phase. The never-smile-no-matter-what-you-can’t-make-me phase. However, as embarrassing as these photos are, they are also, in their own way, something to be proud of, in the same way the “before” pictures in the “before and after” shots are.

She smiles in pictures now. She has a CNN app on her phone. And her hair—well, let’s just say I never complain anymore about her spending too little time on it. It’s actually an amazing transition to take place over four short years. And it’s one that almost every high schooler goes through. Which, I think, is something that’s important for us to remember, especially when it comes time for them to go on with the next phase of their life.

Just as you can’t ever step in the same river twice, you really can’t ever meet the same teenager twice, either. And if you keep expecting to—well, as George Bernard Shaw said, that’s just not very sensible of you.

One of the hardest conversations I have ever had with either one of my children is probably not the one you think it is. It’s not the sex talk, or the drugs and alcohol talk, or even the “it’s impossible for someone to consent to sex when they’re incapacitated by drugs or alcohol” talk. No, the hardest conversation I’ve ever had with them is the one where I explain that they are not geniuses. Or prodigies. Or even whiz kids. At best, I tell them, they are very talented amateurs. Which means that they, like the rest of us, are going to have to work.

This idea is very difficult to convey to them because it is contrary to one of their most cherished beliefs: the belief that if you have enough talent you don’t have to put any effort into being successful. This is also known as the belief that your success or failure is simply the result of a lucky or unlucky draw from the genetic lottery. That some people are better than they are at certain things because “they’re just good at that stuff.”

I’m not arguing against the notion that people have talents and skills that lean in a certain direction, but rather the idea that successful people become successful out of luck. Because, as Thomas Jefferson supposedly said, “The harder I work, the luckier I get.”

In order to get this message across to a classroom full of children, I once brought them every draft of a book I had spent the previous year working on, including the finished work. It was a ridiculous amount of paper—well over 2000 pages all told, every page filled with corrections. As I dropped every draft into the towering stack with a thud, I told the students that this (thunk) was what a book (thunk) really looked like (thunk thunk). And then I dropped my slim novel, all bound and pretty, right on top.

I was hoping to benefit from both the picture and the “thousand words” (actually several hundred thousand words) approach. At least as a writer (one with no regard for trees, apparently) I had some kind of visual proof of all my hard work—it would have been even harder to make my oint if I was a composer, or an athlete.

I don’t know if I was successful: the majority of the students’ eyes passed right over the absolutely monumental pile of rough drafts and went straight to the finished product, because that was the part that looked the most familiar to them. That was the part that looked like books they see in the bookstore.

The irony is that you only really know when you’ve put enough work into something when other people think you’ve spent no effort at all. When the the party, or the presentation, or the novel or the performance comes off without a hitch, and people all smile and tell you “you’re so good at this.” And you smile back and say “thanks,” but what you’re really thinking is, “yeah, I am—but I also worked really hard.”

Sometimes I think that the worst thing that can happen to a kid is to have a natural aptitude for something, whether it be music or football. Because eventually their natural aptitude is going to take them as far as it can, and after that they’re going to have start putting in some work. Meanwhile, the other kids, the ones with no “talent,” are already used to putting in the effort, and so never experience a hiccup in their progress.

Actually, I think that’s the reason so many “talented” kids quit things: they’re not prepared for the fact that after the talent, there still comes work.

Lots of it.

There are a lot of advantages to having more than one child. Hand me downs. Being able to work on the theory that “practice makes perfect.” The option of spreading your nursing home bill out amongst a few different people. But sometimes it seems that the disadvantages outweigh the advantages, especially when I find myself experiencing the worst kind of deja vu. I am speaking, of course, of having to go through two separate incarnations of the, “Please, for the love of god, just clean your room,” phase.

I hate these conversations, mostly because I find myself always sympathizing with their point of view. After all, their rooms are the only place in the whole entire world that they can call their own. The only place they can express who they are and what they are feeling at that moment in time, and sometimes, just like the rest of us, they feel like their inner self is best represented by Taco Bell wrappers and crusty socks. (Lord knows there have been plenty of times when I have felt that pouring the contents of my soul out would look remarkably similar to cleaning out my purse after a cross-country road trip: a horrifying melange of crushed breath mints, empty ball point pens and Starbucks receipts.) And yet, and yet, for all that I support the non-lethal expression of inner angst in the form of “dirty dish therapy,” the fact of the matter is that after a while the rest of the family gets kind of tired of waiting in line to scoop their morning cereal out of a pint glass with a fork.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “Well, why don’t you just make a rule about no food in their bedrooms?” And yeah, that’s a great idea, and a great rule (one I follow in my own bedroom, actually), but the problem with making rules is that you then have to enforce them. And being an enforcer requires a certain amount of diligence and vigilance that I just don’t possess. At least when it comes to food in the bedrooms. Because, honestly, I don’t really care if they bring food into their bedrooms (see: expression of inner angst, taco bell). At least, I don’t care enough about it to have to perform the daily room inspections that would go along with enforcing the rule. (Or risk looking like an impotent blowhard who makes up meaningless rules. And if my “no food in the bedroom” rule is proven meaningless by my unwillingness to enforce it, maybe that means all of my rules are open to interpretation. I’m not saying there’s a direct link between ignoring the “no food in the bedroom” rule and the “don’t smoke crack” one. I’m just saying it’s never a good idea to undermine your own authority.)

In the same vein I really don’t care enough about their appearance or hygiene to enforce a “no clothes on the floor” rule—I do, however, care a lot when the concert is in fifteen minutes and the dress pants come out of the room looking like they spent the weekend getting backstage passes at Coachella.

I guess the problem really is that I want to have my cake and eat it, too: I want their rooms to be able to have the appearance of chaos, but I don’t want to have to live in a house where chaos actually has a foothold. Which probably makes me the parental equivalent of a hipster. Whatever: I’ve been called worse.

Which brings me back once again to the nice part of having done this before: I have tangible proof that even this shall pass. And until then: I guess I’ll just have to start buying thicker cereal. And a really good lint brush.

Recently, while trolling through my latest Facebook page obsession, “Humans of New York,” I came across a picture of a man’s feet (to preserve his anonymity, I assume), and a story about how even though both his children were “raised in the same family,” they couldn’t have turned out more different. (One was a successful businesswoman and the other a near-homeless drug addict.) As is the case with anything that happens on the internet, the comments flew fast and furious, and while the vast majority of them condemned the man for talking about his grown children in public, even anonymously, quite a few took exception to his assertion that he had raised both his children the same. Clearly, the internet reasoned, he had not raised them the same, as they had turned out so very different.

This got me thinking. All debates about nature versus nurture aside, is it ever really possible to treat your children completely the same? I know we all try, if only to avoid the never-ending accusations of “You like him/her better!” (My favorite is when I get this accusation from both children within a five minute span. On those occasions my answer is always something along the lines of, “To be honest, I’m not particularly fond of either one of you right now.”) And yet, as much as we measure each piece of cake with a pair of calipers to make sure they are exactly the same, and as many times as we find ourselves putting an extra, unnecessary present under the Christmas tree “so it will be even,” it’s really never possible for them to grow up in the same environment. Not because we treat them differently, though, but because they grow up with each other.

My son Clyde, for example, is one of the most easy going kids you will ever meet, so much so that it has always been his lot in life to sit next to the known biters at school: it is a well-established fact that Clyde will not bite back. And while I’d like to take credit for his sanguine nature, the truth is that he is so good at ignoring abuse because he grew up with his own personal tormentress—his older sister, Clementine—who saw his sunny disposition as her own personal challenge. And Clementine? Well surely some of her cynical nature must come from the fact that after only five years as reigning princess her kingdom was cut in half by the arrival of the little prince.

I know from firsthand experience that something similar happened in my own family: my older sister never quite got over the betrayal of my arrival. For my part, I was able to avoid most punishments and chastisements because I had her going before me; it’s much easier to pick the right door when the person directly in front of you picks the wrong one time and time again.

Maybe something similar happened in “shoe guy”’s family. Or maybe he was a liar, or clueless, or he really did raise his children with two different sets of expectations. Or maybe he was telling the truth, and despite his best efforts, one kid was happy and the other was not.

I think that’s what probably stirred up the internet’s hornet nest the most: the idea that maybe this guy did everything right and still got an outcome that was “wrong.” Because that would mean that the same thing could happen to us, and that idea is, of course, frankly terrifying.

No wonder the poor guy only wanted to be seen by his shoes.

(If, like me, you are a fan of “Humans of New York,” check out Flagstaff’s version,“Flag Folk.” It’s pretty great.)

This last Spring Break, because of differing school schedules my family ended up taking two different planes to get back home from our vacation. At first this had me worried: I’m almost pathological about my need to hang onto everyone’s boarding pass for them at the airport (if you’ve ever been present when my kids have lost theirs in the three steps it takes to get from the sitting area to the gate, you’d understand why). And so the thought of not having all four of them clutched in my sweaty little palm until we were actually on the plane made me quite anxious. Or at least it did, before I had spent the four hours prior to our arrival at the Miami airport sitting in a car with this very same family, and then, suddenly, the idea of taking two different planes didn’t sound quite so bad; in fact, if I hadn’t been so determined to find the nearest bar, I probably would’ve looked into changing it to three.

I have met people who say their children don’t fight with each other. Truth be told, I always feel a little sad for these folks. Sad because obviously their children’s fighting has become so extreme that they ended up suffering a mental break, and are now living in a fantasy world where children don’t bicker. Either that or they have opted for the blue pill. Because, come on: everyone’s kids fight.

Hopefully not all of the time. Hopefully not to the point of police intervention (I was going to say medical intervention, but I know of too many people whose “how I got this scar” stories start with “my brother and I were fighting.”) But they most definitely fight. This is just one of those irrefutable laws of parenting, along with “the diaper will always fail at the worst possible moment” and “other people’s kids sound better than mine in Christmas letters.” The fact is, if you have a sibling, you will fight with them. Because siblings are a pain.

Whenever my children complain to me about the fact that I saddled them with a sibling I always explain to them that I did it for them, so that they would one day be better able to handle difficult individuals. (And also so that they can have someone who can corroborate their stories of neglect, torment and abuse when they are telling their “why my mother was the worst” stories. These stories usually come about three drinks after the “how I got this scar” stories.)

As sarcastic as my explanation may seem, there is still a grain of truth to it—I do think having a sibling prepares you for the worst in people. And, believe it or not, that’s a good thing. Because, eventually, at some point in our lives, we are all going to run into someone who is really, truly, dreadful. (And perhaps, at least according to the people around us, maybe even be that person ourselves.) At that point it is always nice to have a point of reference to compare their awfulness to; a bell curve, if you will, where you can place their dreadful behavior. And, if you were lucky enough to grow up with a sibling, you will always be able to place their behavior right smack in the middle of your particular bell.

Co-worker stealing your lunch? Not nearly as bad as the time your sister ate the last piece of birthday cake—on your birthday. Neighbor blocked your driveway? Remember when your brother parked his car behind yours and then left town for a month with the keys?

And, of course, there’s always the time when you fought so much on your vacation that your mom put the two of you on two different planes.

I have a confession to make to all of my elementary school teachers: I can’t stand word finds. Granted, this is probably because I am so very terrible at them, but still: I loathe the little buggers. There’s just something about staring at a glut of letters and trying to find the “hidden words” that has always given me a headache, the same way I would get a headache when I was in Thailand and would catch myself trying to read the writing on signs as I walked down the street. (I think its the squiggly shape of the Thai alphabet that makes me think I can understand it if I only squint hard enough. Or sober up enough. Trust me, though: neither one works.)

Unfortunately, that same squinting/sobering technique is equally unsuccessful with word finds. Which is why I never pushed my kids to do them when they were in grade school. There are just some childhood memories that are still so painful to me that I swore I would protect my kids from them at all costs. Boiled spinach. Polyester dresses. Burt Reynolds. And, of course, word finds. Although, now that my children are older, I’m starting to rethink those earlier decisions.

The impetus for this “rethinking” came the other day, when I was trying to show Clementine the name and location of the hotel I had booked for her in Miami. I would be out of cell phone range when it came time for her to check into the hotel, and so I wanted to make sure she understood where she would be staying until the rest of the family joined her the next day. With this in mind I showed her the email confirmation, a piece of paper that, including the recipient information, salutation, and sign off, literally had less than fifty words written on it. Seven of those words were written in bold in the very middle of the page, and they were “You are staying at the Posh Hostel.”

Clementine took the paper from me, glanced at it, and then handed it back in disgust. “Just tell me where I’m staying.”

I pointed to the paper again. “It says it right there.”

Another glance. Another rejection. “No, it doesn’t.”

I looked at the paper, thinking that perhaps I had handed her the wrong one by mistake. Nope. “You are staying at the Posh Hostel,” it read. “Did you read this?” I asked.

“I didn’t have time to read it all the way through,” she replied. “Just tell me already.”

I blinked. Didn’t have time? She had spent the morning looking at cat pictures online. All morning. Suddenly I had some insight into all those word find assignments all those years ago. Perhaps this was why my teachers assigned so many of them. Perhaps they weren’t sadists who enjoyed watching children become frustrated, but rather kind, helpful souls who could anticipate that one day the world would become so complicated and distracting that the ability to tune out extra information and concentrate on gleaning the wheat from the chaff would be of the utmost importance. Maybe, even though we only had four TV channels at the time, they were predicting the day when information overload would make the ability to focus on one task not only helpful, but necessary for survival. Or at least necessary for finding out the name of your hotel.

Then again, maybe they were just trying to keep us distracted while they flipped through their Burt Reynolds edition of Playgirl. Either way, I wish I had saved a few of those word finds to share with my children. I have a feeling they’re going to be needing the practice.