The story of my life

My mother asked me yesterday on the phone a question that did not surprise me, even though I’ve been with my new company for nearly two years.

“What is it you *do* there?” she asked.

I told her.

“Oh,” she said. “I had someone ask me the other day, and I couldn’t tell them. I said that I thought you were in management or something.”

Uh, no. Not particularly.

“Oh,” she said.

I wanted to say, “Mom, there are a million things you don’t know about me, because you’ve never asked. You assume you know things about my life, but you don’t know. I’d be happy to tell you, but I just always assumed that if you were interested that you would ask.”

I didn’t, of course. But I wanted to.

How to confuse a child #187

Yesterday a girlfriend of mine and her three kids picked me up to head over to a spring festival put on by a local martial arts group. We found the spot where it was but were disappointed to realize that there were only three booths – we had hoped for more. So we headed to the bigger park in town, hoping to catch some music and food there only to find that they were throwing out the last bags of trash from the party. As we decided to go back to Plan A, my girlfriend piped up with a big, enthusiastic:

“Let’s go back and party with the Pagans!”

“Party with the Penguins?” the nine-year-old asked quizzically.

“Penguins?!” the little one said, careening her head around to look out the window. “Where?!”

“Pay-guns,” their mother repeated with emphasis.

“Penguins?”

“NO,” she said. “PAY-GUNS.”

“What are pagans?” the oldest one asked.

We looked at each other, not knowing quite what to say next and made something up about nature and trees and religion and the earth.

“Oh,” the little one said. “I wanted a party with penguins.”

“Penguins can be nice, too. But I don’t think there are going to be any at this party.”

Maybe next year.