There's a coffee table game out there somewhere that I'd be really good at.
Ever wonder why I sometimes have that glazed look in my eyes - seeking some place far away; a dream place where there is no sound. Ever wonder why my answers to your relatively easy questions are met with lame responses that do not answer them like... "that's just what it is. It's that."
96% of the time it's because I've just spent 20 minutes in the car with Bobbin with no plausible exit, and am recovering from being bombarded with 104 questions about every possible range of subjects, many of which I didn't even know existed or happened. My creative juices had long run out my ears about 10 minutes into the trip. So by the time I get to you, I am a mere husk. A shell of the being I was just a few minutes ago.
I am not exaggerating. I've been meaning to quantify for you, with real data, just what a typical 20 minute car ride is like for me and Bobbin. So I bought one of those little counter clickers - you know; the kind you see people holding at doors to events to count the people entering. I bought it and set it in the car, primed and ready to click when I picked her up.
5:06pm. This is the point at which she entered the vehicle with me. The questions started long before, but I left the clicker on the dash. She was in good form so I knew I wouldn't run out of questions before we got home.
Exactly 20 minutes later we pull into the driveway. The questions are still coming.
Final tally: 104 questions at 5:26 precisely.
104 questions in 20 minutes.
That's 5.2 questions per minute.
I answered every one, but by the end of it they were mostly lame answers.
- "Why the digger tracker isn't moving, Mommy?
- "The driver's gone home to dinner"
- "It's not dinner time yet"
- "Maybe she's gone potty"
- "Did she go in the yucky potty?
- "If she felt like she had to go bad enough, probably"
- "What do they do with the pee pee in the yucky potty"
- "A truck comes by to clean it"
- "How?"
- "With a mechanical arm; the same kind of arm they use in space. They have to use a robot arm because no one can get close enough in person because the stench is so bad it will knock you unconcious. So they build these potty robots whose job it is to toodle around the city and empty all the yucky potties.
- "How they empty them? Where does all the pee pee and poopy go?
- "They suck it out"
- "like a straw?"
- "Yup. It's kinda like a milkshake at that point. Like maybe an oreo cookie mango smoothie milkshake"
How did I get here - from digger tractors to poo milkshakes, There's a coffee table game out there somewhere that I'd be really good at.
Oh... what about the other 4% of the time? They are questions that I get asked and answer around 9:30pm; half an hour after I've taken my daily dose Zoloft and Ambien. Making me happy and sleepy and not even a little bit capable of focusing both eyes on a single object at the same time. Try reading any blog post published after 11pm but before 3am. You'll see what I mean.
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