the ark of mark

I always get a kick out of those moments in life when I pause and say to myself, “Now this is something I never imagined myself doing.”  I get a kick out of the quirkier ones, anyway.  Not so much ones like, say, passing a kidney stone.

A good example of an unexpected quirky event would be back in October when I had my photo taken with Count Chocula.  Another example would be the time I visited a prison as part of my former job.  I should stress that my presence at the prison was requested and not court-ordered.  I visited to discuss electric utility sorts of issues, and ended up eating lunch in the prison kitchen where my hamburger and fries were prepared by a friendly prison cook.  Let’s just say when he finished his shift in the kitchen he did not have a long commute home.

Last night our family was preparing to sit down and enjoy the Pixar movie Ratatouille.  I love Pixar movies and was eager to get started.  Shelby wandered into the room carrying a pencil and a napkin.  Apparently during dinner she had started doing a little math in her head.  For lack of a better description, she was going through doubles (two plus two is four, four plus four is eight, etc).  She had gotten all the way up to 64 plus 64 is 128 in her head.

(This is where I hope you remember she’s in second grade because I’m not going to mention it so it won’t sound like I’m bragging).

Shelby had taken her napkin to figure out what came next by writing it down.  She’d added 128 and 128 to get 256.  She’d added 256 and 256 to get 512.  By the time she ran out of napkin she’d made it all the way to 131072 plus 131072 equals 262144.  (Don’t bother checking the progression yourself; I just did using a spreadsheet).  Here’s the napkin:

I didn’t even know she could do that kind of math yet.  Her teacher had recently taught the all-important skill of “carrying the one.”  Shelby asked me to make up a few more addition problems for her to try, and I did.  And then big brother Jacob got in the act.  Modesty prevents me from saying that Jacob is himself an excellent math student.  Jacob threw a couple of tricks at her and even introduced the subtraction concept of borrowing from your neighbor only to learn that your neighbor is a loser zero and can’t offer much help on his own, but might be willing to discuss the situation with his neighbor.

They were having a grand time.  And then it happened.  So fast I didn’t even realize what I was doing until the words were out of my mouth.

“OK,” I said.  “Just one more problem and then you’ve got to stop so we can start the movie.”

Yes.  I am the dad who stopped his children from voluntarily doing math problems during Christmas vacation so they would watch TV with him.  By next year I’ll be putting cigarettes under the tree.

Now don’t misunderstand me to be saying I think I’ve been an overall negative influence on my children.  But this incident did make me think.  George Bailey’s Christmas lesson was that Bedford Falls would have been a mess without him.  My Christmas lesson this year is that the days of leading my kids are numbered, because all too soon I’ll only be getting in their way if I try.

Bah humbling.