This morning my schedule was thrown off by a two hour delay at Sutton school, so instead of dropping off Zephryn and Lyli at school first, I dropped off Aysha at the high school and then Tryphon at his school and then drove home. After I dropped T off at school, Zephryn asked to sit in front and I agreed. I really miss the time alone in the car that we used to have when I had to drive him to school alone, I just love the way our conversations flow. This morning was no different, and it left me chuckling to myself, the way a 9 year old b
oys mind works is just amazing. It started off with "Mom, I saw a show about Yetis, they don't know if they re real or not though. Do you think they could be real?". So I told him that its entirely possible that there are species of animals we don't know about because we haven't explored all that there is to explore, and if they travelled in small groups, it would be hard to find animals that didn't want to be found. He accepted that answer, and asked (because Yetis live in the Himalayas) "Is it true that Mount Everest grows 2 inches a year?" I said I didn't know how much it grew but that, yes, it was still growing. "because of the snow pack, right?" I wasn't sure if it was the snow or if it was because of the plates moving together..then I had to explain to him how the Himalayan mountains were formed, how the plate was being pushed up as India was being rammed into Asia. And then I explained about how the plates moved against each other and that's how earthquakes are started. Well..in a 9 yo's head apparently earthquakes = tornado's...so I had to then explain that tornado prediction and studying is much different than the study of earth movement because fault lines are where they are...but we don't know where the tornado's are going to spawn..we can only guess, and even then the chance that we would guess right is..."Like winning the lottery?" "well..yes Zep, its a small percentage like winning the lottery". "When I'm older I'm going to play the lottery, and if i win I'm going to buy a house..but if i don't win the lottery then I'm going to invent something to get money." Then I had to go into my spiel about how money doesn't equal happiness, and though it can make us comfortable its not all there is to life. " i know that Mom, I'm going to give houses away to...to hobos...so they have a place to live. and I'll give what I don't need to other charities too, for sick kids and things". Which at that point I smiled..its nice to know you have a generous kid who "gets" it and i marvelled at how mature he can be. but the mom in me, that doesn't want to see my kids get taken advantage of had to then talk about how "if you come across a homeless person on the street asking for money for food..is it better to give him the money hes asking for, or to give him some food?" And explain that there are people out there with many different problems and sometimes instead of just giving them what they "want"..its better to give them what they really "need". "That's why I'm going to stay away from all those bad things, like drugs and alcohol, the world is filled with bad stuff". Now its on to talking about balance, and how without bad, there would be no good, and how nature is all about balance and how when they did away with the wolves out west the deer population exploded and they were eating all the crops and people had to step in and start killing the deer before they starved or died of disease. Which lead him to something that had to do with something material (sorry, this was a 1/2 hr car ride...that happened 3 hours ago..my aged brain is losing threads of the conversation), to which I replied (and I should have known better) "its more important how you live your life, and how you treat the people you love, when you're dying on your death bed, you wont be asking for your "stuff" you'll be asking for the people you love and talking with them about the things you did together and how much you enjoyed them.". Which lead into him crying because it reminded him of my dad. I told him I understood he was sad, but Grandpa would always be with us, and it was important to remember the good things about the people we miss. And of course being sad he said he didn't remember anything good. So I told him "well, your grandpa researched the Ruggles line all the way back to the 1200's. So you, and your children, and their children and their children will always know where they came from.". At which point he perked up (I should have seen this coming as well) and said "did he research it all the way to the beginning? to the cave men??" . I said "no, written history doesn't go back that far..and we all started from 2 people...that evolved (sorry if this is a sore subject for some of you, but we do believe in evolution in this family and i respect the opinion of those of you who chose not to believe, please give us the same respect) past the whatever it is that they were..not really apes...(I had only had one cup of coffee....I'm surprised I got this far in the conversation to be honest) but pre cavemen and they had kids..and the kids had kids..and eventually we evolved into what we are today...which is why I don't understand why race and culture can be such an issue to some people..because we're all related". At which point he turned back into a 9 year old boy and said "I'M PART MONKEY!!" And started making monkey noises and talking about how that must be why he has soooo much hair. I could only shake my head and laugh because I know one day I'm going to really miss having these conversations.
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