Not My Bed

I spent the night at my parents' last night (I had an early business meeting this morning and it'd take way too long to get there from downtown -- and my car's in the shop anyway.) I stayed in the "monkey room" -- my mom gave each of the two guest bedrooms a theme, so one is the monkey room, the other is the Asian room -- and honestly, it was a little weird. Not because of the monkeys and circus animals decorating the room, but because it was the first time I spent the night in the new house when my parents were there. I've stayed there a couple times when my parents were on vacation, mainly to watch Danny, make sure he got to school and whatnot.

This time, though, they were home, and it's clear they've still got the same night-time routines they had when I last lived with them, 10 years later. My dad is in one room, reading the paper and watching a ballgame on TV, and my mom is putzing around in the kitchen or watching some sitcom or movie on a different TV. And Danny, of course, is in his room, watching the 9 o'clock news on his own TV (if he's not playing a game on his computer).

I spent part of the evening watching TV with my mom, then wandering the house looking for something to do. Danny invited me to watch the weather with him (he's mildly obsessed with it, storms especially) and we idly chatted about things for awhile.

He mentioned his bike was 4 years old and that he's 19, and wondered how much older than his bike he is (math is his worst subject -- he doesn't get it conceptually, can't grasp the foundations of it). We worked together to figure it out, focusing first on counting backwards (he's got counting up down pretty well, but counting down is tough) from 15, then 20, then 25. We were working on 30 down when my mom yelled up for him to go to bed -- he wasn't able to carry his understanding of switching from 2- in 20 to 1- in 19 over to apply it to the 3- in 30. I'll have to work on it with him again sometime soon, before he forgets what he's figured out.

Posted by Andrew Huff at September 3, 2003 03:26 PM