Chain chain chain

Sport left his glasses on the back of my car last night. He tried to convince himself that he’d left them somewhere else: in the garage, on the swing out front, on his headboard, but of course, they were nowhere to be found. I imagine they were lying in the middle of the interstate most of the morning, finally pulverized into dust by passing 18-wheelers.

I was proud of the way SO handled the information. Sport told us about the missing glasses in the middle of a visit from his aunt, and SO was able to keep his composure. He’s able to deal with the stupid kid stuff better than I am — I’m notoriously short on patience when it comes to this.

We took the boys to the art museum on Tuesday to see a Napoleon exhibit, and while it kept LegoGuy mildy entertained, Sport was bored. It was a video on chain reaction that really caught their attention. It was 30 minutes long, but it was almost impossible to get up and leave once we sat down to watch it. I think Sport was expecting a grand finale – fireworks, girls dancing the Can Can, or, at the very least, a perfectly brewed pot of hot tea – but it didn’t work that way. It was an exercise in math, chemistry, and planning. Lots and lots of planning.

I wish I could say the boys learned something from that video, like if you send a tire down an inclined plane, and it knocks a burning candle into a puddle of gasoline, the subsequent explosion could cause a concussion that would send several tubes of empty tape rolls into the air, and on and on, causing a chain reaction that ultimately might result in the death of an entire civilization of people. (I don't know, we really didn't get to the end of it -- maybe the candle fizzled out at the end or a brigade of volunteer firemen rushed into the warehouse and shut the whole thing down.)

I really hoped it might give them pause before doing something that, in the end, would bring about bodily harm or at least the loss of a pair of expensive glasses. Didn’t happen.

Sport put the glasses on the back of my car as the sun was going down and left them there all night. The next morning, I backed out of the garage, and, as the sun had not yet come up, didn’t notice they were there. I took off for the highway, humming along with whatever was on the radio, racing through lights that were about to turn yellow, completely oblivious.

Kids don't think about what happens next. They live in the moment. I like this about kids -- but it can also be kinda painful. I know this, having experienced it myself at the ripe old age of six. My father, burning leaves as he often did during the fall, left one pile unattended. My sister, younger by a year, took a stick and put the tip of it into the flames, getting it nice and hot. Then, she branded me on the back. Later (after her spanking), she was remorseful and sad. She hadn't meant to hurt me, she just wanted to see me jump.

Another incident with fire, this time my niece. Seeing a lit candle in the bathroom, she wondered what it would look like if she threw a wadded up handful of toilet paper into it. She didn't realize it would startle her, making her sweep the blazing item into the trashcan, causing an even bigger conflagration. She was perfectly willing to confess, but only after she'd spent about 5 minutes trying to come up with the right way to tell her uncle that the bathroom was on fire.

Then there was the time I warned LegoGuy not to mess with a giant pile of rocks, just before he slipped and took off the entire top layer of shin skin.

Sport's got a backup pair of glasses, one with a missing nose piece. We'll get that fixed, and he'll be back in business.

I wish monocles were popular. I think he'd look great sporting one of those. And they're cheaper to replace.