Driving in Cars with Kiddos
May 1, 2008 · Print This Article
Sometimes big thoughts hit you during small moments.
For whatever reason, my kiddos and I were talking about the city that lives underneath Disneyland, full of offices and tunnels and security and employees making their way across the park without having to brave the crowds. I believe the Mickey Mouse Jail is underground, too. Not that I’ve ever been in it. But, hey, I know people who have, so HA!
“Hey, Momma, wouldn’t it be fun to live underground?”
Before I could say anything, Tanner butted in to say exactly what I was thinking. “No way,” he replied. “Everyone would be all grumpy and depressed…”
“Exactly,” I interjected, imagining a world full of people stricken with seasonal affective disorder due to sun deprivation.
“… until we evolved.”
Okay, I wasn’t thinking that last part.
“Evolved?” Allison repeated, her eyebrows going all wrinkly.
Tanner turned around in his seat to look at Allison who sat behind him in the middle row of our car. “Yeah,” he said, with that twelve-year-old air of confidence and superiority sixth-graders have before they go off to junior high and have it squashed out of them. “Then? We’ll lose our eyes and have to find our way around by echolocation.”
Okay, I wasn’t thinking that part either.
I could see in the rearview mirror that Allison’s eyebrows had flown up into her hairline as her eyes widened to enormous proportions behind her glasses.
Tanner, never one to miss an opportunity to showboat, cupped his hand to the side of his mouth and stage-whispered, “And then we become FISH!”
Allison gasped. Hannah snickered from the very back seat of the car, then continued reading the book that had miraculously kept her out of the conversation up to this point.
I looked over at Tanner–torn between reproving him for freaking out his sister or giving him props for his correct usage of sweet words such as “evolve” and “echolocation”– but before I could say anything he smiled smugly at his littler sister and said, “But don’t worry. Evolving would take years.”
I cleared my throat.
“Millions of years,” Tanner amended.
Allison’s tense little body sagged with relief. “I guess it wouldn’t be fun to live underground after all, huh, Momma,” she said.
“I guess not,” I replied, smiling at her in the rearview mirror. Then I turned to glance at Tanner, with what I hoped was a stern look on my face. “Echolocation?” I asked, raising my eyebrows. “Fish?”
Tanner shrugged and smiled, then turned away to look out the window.
Echolocation, I murmured to myself, amused. Evolution. I ever-so-slyly stole a look at my son, and suddenly, in that small moment, the big thought struck. We may have millions of years underground before we evolve into freaky, sightless, echolocating fish, but my son appears to be evolving right before my eyes into more and more of a handsome young man than my sweet little buddy boy.
And that quickly, evolution didn’t seem all that funny anymore.
“Echolocation!” Hannah piped up from the back seat as she slammed shut her book. “Like bats!” she added with a giggle.
At that, I burst out laughing. Because honestly. Echolocation? Still funny.
What a great story.
Millions of years? But my husband only took 6.5 years to evolve from a single, free-thinking man into an almost perfectly obediant spouse…
Okay - joking… Please don’t tell the Hubby.
Now Little Dude, he’s been evolving too quickly in front of us…