It is a beautiful autumn day in my part of Wisconsin! The sun is out, the leaves are turning to the loveliest colors, the air is crisp and cool. Aaaaah.

Nick and I headed over to school early today so we could spend a good half hour on the nature walk in the woods next to the school before he headed inside to prison. I mean, school. We were 2 minutes and 30 yards in playing hide-and-seek when he suddenly ran back to me and spoke with urgency. “MOMMY! I have to poop! NOW!!”

Why is so much of my life about poop?

“Is it an emergency?” I asked.

“Yes!” answered Nick as his feet started the telltale pitter-patter of an I-gotta-poop happy dance.

“Can you wait five minutes while we get back to the car and drive home?”

“NO.”

So he dropped trou’ in the woods. This is not an issue for us, being Masters of the wilderness poop. He squatted, held onto my leg, and quickly unloaded his bowels. I stared at his poop in shock, as I always do. How does a 3-foot-tall, 41-pound squirt issue man-turds?

It looked like a clean one, so I felt cheerful because I had nothing to clean him with. Until we started to pull up his pants. That’s when I realized he had also peed while pooping, shooting every drop into the waist hole of his pants and underwear, which were around his ankles as he squatted. I had forgotten about the whole tiny-penis-pointing-straight-up thing.

So, instead of enjoying a half hour in the woods, we climbed back in the car and raced home for a quick bath and clothing change, We barely made it back to school on time in a numb frenzy, without collecting a single autumn leaf or chasing a single squirrel or wood fairy.

And that about sums up my life these days, whether it’s the figurative or the actual walk in the woods you’re talking about.

I am just not a bright bulb these days. About a month ago I was bombarded by the IQs of my Facebook friends, based on quickie quizzes posted up by some unidentified sources. Everyone reported being in the 120 to 130 range, which struck me as curiously uniform.

Just for kicks, Anthony and I took one of the tests together, because we’re a team, we’re partners in life, we’re joined permanently in the universal union of love. Yeah. That’s why. Our collective IQ is allegedly in the 130’s, so I guess that means we’re about 65 each. That sounds right.

The test was short. There were simple pattern questions (numbers and shapes) and math and word stuff and some basic logic. Not especially impressive. Not like being able to sort out socks from six full loads of laundry without having even ONE singleton sock remaining. Which I seriously managed to do a couple months ago, so I know my laundry IQ is like, 200. (Or my OCD was in full blossom. You choose.)

I took another one of the IQ tests all by myself and attempted to get every single answer wrong. I tried really hard. My IQ was still reported as 115, which tells me something. It tells me that I’M TOO STUPID TO FAIL AN IQ TEST ON PURPOSE. Hopeless.

I’m not a fan of IQ tests. In my opinion, an “intelligence” test that asks this question — “which of the following does not belong?” — without providing criteria for belonging is, in the immortal words of Anthony, “a stupid test.” The answer depends on your perspective and culture and whether you can determine what category the test writer has in mind. There are almost always legitimate alternatives. It’s a test of something, just not innate intelligence. I feel this is even more true for patterning questions. What comes next in a pattern depends on how long the repeating pattern is, and there are lots of ways to shake that out when you only have a few observations to work with. So really the IQ being tested isn’t some innate smarty-pants thing, but a person’s ability to anticipate what the testing body was expecting the testee to observe. What do you call that, test-taking social cue IQ?

This is all redundant prattle, of course. Debates about IQ tests and standardized tests are the stuff of legend. LEGEND, I tell you.

I used to be really good at standardized tests, because I’m simple. I actually think they’re kind of fun, which says something very lame about me. I used to teach for the Princeton Review. My niche was teaching the reading and comprehension sections of the LSAT to the “rocks” — standardized testing bottom-dwellers. Working with this cohort was eye-opening. Most of the people were really interesting and sometimes outright strange. Usually they had more questioning minds than the average high-scoring joe or joan. Their perception of the meanings of words and phrases was frequently off norm, and yet perfectly sensible – even poetic sometimes – once they could explain it to me. On several occasions I was unable to formulate a legitimate, intellectually sound answer when challenged as to why one multi-choice answer was better than another. In such situations, I was apt to tell the student this. It doesn’t matter that you are making sense. You suck at standardized tests and you still will get the answer wrong. You need to think like the boob who wrote the test, and like the boobs who do well on the test, and like the boob standing in front of you right now trying to help you do better on the test.

When I was 10, we moved from Seoul, Korea — a vibrant, polluted third-world metropolis in 1976 — to Stockton-Someplace-Special, the armpit of California. After a short while in the local public school’s fifth grade, I was placed in a room with a strange man who presented me with a bunch of crazy-ass problems to solve. I had fixed in my mind that a 200 IQ was required to be a “genius.” I have no idea where that came from. When my mom told me I had been given an IQ test and mine was somewhere in the 150’s, I concluded with a mix of sadness and relief that I was a pretty ordinary schmo. I still believe that. There were a lot of reasons why I would test well when I was 10. I was bilingual and I could read in Korean, so that naturally made language stuff easier. I studied classical piano from when I was 4, so that gave me some discipline and less anxiety in a performance/testing setting. My dad was a reader, so I read a lot. My dad loved crossword puzzles, logic problems, spatial brain teasers and such, so I grew up doing all of that from an early age. I had a really good memory, so that made all the academic basics easier. Maybe the DOD schools were better in Korea. Who knows. None of this meant I was innately smarter than anyone else, but it surely would have made it easier for me to work my way through an IQ test with some school psychologist.

If I took a real IQ test now, I believe I would present with a double-digit number, hopefully a high one. And I would be proud. My once phenomenal memory has been shot to pieces by aging, parenthood, and sleep deprivation, and I’m just not very good at logical problem solving anymore. What does spending nearly a decade almost exclusively in the company of small children do to a brain? I get depressed when I think about it too much. I can practically see and hear my brain pathways withering away and dumbing down, my memories of mathematical concepts and musical forms and complex legal principles methodically replaced by monosyllabic rhyming words and threatening 5-counts, my ability to process and organize large amounts of data transformed into a spectacular talent for finding where Nick last hid his green dragon with the orange horns and see-through wings, my axons sheering away left and right like chunks of ice crumbling off the arctic sheet.

How long was that sentence?? See what I mean?? I make no sense anymore.

I can’t make it through a single day in a sensible fashion. I experience life as a chaotic, quantum affair, ping-ponging from need to need as my children bully me through each day. My bulb is dimming. The only way for me to get to three digits on a real IQ test would be if they give me long enough and I manage to pull a trick, like the hypothetical monkey who types randomly on a keyboard for ten years and eventually produces a Shakespearean sonnet.

Anyway, why did people post up their fake IQs on Facebook? Who cares? I’m so much more interested in specific skills, like if people said things like… I’m so good at spatial problem solving than I managed to make 7.5 inch floor tiles fit a 12-foot square room without a single cut by manipulating the grout width perfectly. I’m so good with plants that I wintered over calla lilies in Fairbanks. I hear voices and music in my head, here watch this Youtube video where I recorded some of them. I ran a seven-minute mile, check it out on map-my-run so you know I ain’t lyin’. My farts can clear an entire conference room; anyone know a good consultant who can help me update my resume?

If my Facebook friends posted up things like that, I would think they were all geniuses and it would be a really fascinating day on Facebook.

All this nonsense on the 5-minute drive to the bagel shop for lunch:

Mommy, can I have candy?

No.

When can I have candy?

I don’t know. Not today.

You know I have two favorite candies. Guess what my favorites are.

I don’t know.

My very favorite is the little ones. Do you know the ones I mean? They are little.

No idea, Nick.

it is like little balls, but there is no chocolate in them.

Oh you mean skittles? (I’m dismayed I know what he means.)

Yeah! Skittles! Mommy, can I have skittles?

No.

When can I have skittles?

I don’t know. Not today.

But when can I?

I don’t know. we don’t have any.

Then when can we get them?

I don’t know. I would have to buy some.

Then can we stop for them now?

No.

Do you know where to buy them?

No. I mean, yes. but I don’t want to. The bags are too big and then you’ll eat too many.

Can I maybe just have a little bowl of them, like I could have maybe three or four, or maybe 8 or 12?

I don’t want to talk about skittles anymore.

Okay. (15 second pause.) Mommy. Tell me one of the things I’m thinking about on the school bus.

What?

Tell me one of the things I’m thinking about, on my chair on the school bus.

Nick, how can I —

Tell me.

That’s so random, Nick.

JUST GUESS. You just have to think a little bit and tell me what you think I’m thinking about.

Uh… Poop?

No! Poop isn’t in the bus.

Tree?

No! Trees don’t grow on buses! It’s something that keeps you safe.

Oh, seatbelts.

Yeah! There’s no seatbelts on buses. What’s different about buses and cars?

Other than seatbelts? I don’t know, I guess the bus is big and the car is little.

Yeah! The bus is big and long but the cars are not big and long. But the cars are kind of big.

(Nick stares out the window contemplatively and makes weird machine-gun noises with his tongue for a few seconds.)

Mommy. What if there were boogers all over you. How would you feel?

I would feel boogery and slimy.

Why?

Because I would be covered in boogers. Duh.

Do your boogers have slime on them?

I don’t know. i mean, they’re mucus, so…

What does mucus mean?

Um, i guess it means boogers. Hey, what if YOU were covered in boogers?

I would reflect them back on you! (guffawing at his own awesomeness for this wit.)

Gross.

What if you were in a dinosaur’s nose?

What?

What if your whole entire body was in a dinosaur’s nose?

Then I would be covered with dinosaur boogers.

How would you feel?

I would feel disgusting.

Yeah, you would be TOTALLY disgusting. (hysterical laughter from back seat.)

Oh look we’re here. Get out of the car. (Mom shakes head to unload newly deceased brain cells.)

Just for kicks, I googled “What does it mean to be grumpy.” I was wondering how the world around me perceives grumpy people. I was surprised by what google unloaded.

The urban dictionary says “grumpy” is slang for “the act of defocating” (misspelling in the original). As in, “I just took a grumpy in the can.”

For real? Who knew? I’m familiar with many, many euphemisms for poop and pooping — I consider myself a veritable expert — but this is new.

Aargh. Autocorrect. If I type “poop,” autocorrect actually offers me “poopfest” and “poopage” as alternative words. But if I type “poopING,” suddenly autocorrect is all coy and must change it to “popping” or “pooling.” Apparently Ms. Autocorrect has a problem with in-progress bowel movements. What a prude.

The on-line slang dictionary takes it to the next level of transformative hip. You can “bust a grumpy.” Pooping re-purposed as a form of dance? Mm.

I dunno. I think most of us feel less grumpy after releasing the hounds. Maybe I’m wrong.

This Google search took me in such an unexpected direction. Then I scrolled down and discovered google’s offerings for “related searches.”

I’ll never understand the Internet. (Shakes head and grumbles as she walks up the stairs to go bust a grumpy.)

Maximum grumpy edition today. Five interminable minutes into trying to help Jesse figure out some multiplication tricks before she heads to school, while Nick intercedes with random animal noises and disruptive behaviors, my mood sinks swiftly from irritable to irate:

Nick, cut it out.

BAYA BAYA BAYA NANANANA

Nick. Stop it. Now.

(Laughing while he pokes my boobs and ass)

IT’S NOT FUNNY.

Nyeh nyeh nyeh banana

NICHOLAS, CUT IT OUT NOW.

(giggling while he burrows his head under my butt on the sofa)

NICHOLAS, THIS IS NOT FUNNY. YOU WILL SPEND THE ENTIRE [silent f***ing] DAY WITH ME, BECAUSE I’M GOING ON THE [silent god-awful] FIELD TRIP WITH YOUR CLASS. JESSE WON’T SEE ME ALL DAY. I NEVER GET TO PLAY WITH HER BECAUSE OF YOU [silent you jackass]. I AM ALLOWED TO GIVE JESSE ATTENTION [silent even though she’s a jackass too]. YOU ARE NOT THE ONLY PERSON WHO MATTERS. SHE MATTERS TOO. [silent why am I talking so loud this morning?]

(tears and snarfly voice from the little guy)

I will just, just… I will just go upstairs now, mommy.

NO [silent oh em gee you’re such a little cutie]. YOU COME HERE RIGHT NOW. GIVE ME A HUG. I CAN BE ANGRY AT YOU AND STILL LOVE YOU. I CAN GIVE JESSE ATTENTION AND STILL LOVE YOU.

Okay, okay. I will just go upstairs now.

(wonderful peaceful silence for 3 minutes until, from the stairs…)

Mommy? I have to poop.

Okay, then go poop. [silent why now??] Do it fast because we have to take Jesse to school in three minutes.

What does three minutes mean?

Go sit on the can. NOW.

(grunting noises)

Okay I’m done now, mommy.

(butt wiping)

That poop hurt, mommy.

I’m sorry buddy. Wash your hands and pull up your pants.

(dawdling)

NOW. WASH YOUR HANDS NOW. WE HAVE TO TAKE JESSE TO SCHOOL.

(washes. doesn’t dry)

DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT WIPING YOUR WET HANDS ON ME OR JESSE. NO ONE THINKS THAT’S FUNNY. USE THE TOWEL. NOW. YOU ARE FIVE YEARS OLD. YOU NEED TO CHANGE THESE IRRITATING HABITS. I AM SICK OF TELLING YOU THE SAME THINGS OVER AND OVER.

(Jesse wanders upstairs for a peaceful word)

Mom. Can you stop being so mean to Nick? Stop being so angry.

????

[silent omg that’s so sweet she’s sticking up for him!] ARE YOU KIDDING ME? ALL YOU GUYS DO IS FIGHT. YOU’RE ALWAYS YELLING AT NICK FOR THIS SAME STUFF THAT’S BOTHERING ME TODAY. MAYBE IF YOU GUYS DIDN’T FIGHT AND YELL AT EACH OTHER ALL THE TIME WHEN YOU’RE TOGETHER [silent I’m exaggerating, aren’t I] I WOULDN’T BE SO FRUSTRATED THIS MORNING. GET YOUR SHOES AND SWEATERS ON. IT’S TIME TO GO. NOW.

(Nick decides this is the time to suddenly want to do his own sweater zipper)

I WILL DO IT FOR YOU [silent even though I should let you do it, but I will shrivel into an emotional prune if I have to wait patiently for this today]. YOU ALWAYS MAKE ME DO IT. THAT’S WHY YOU DON’T KNOW HOW. THIS IS NOT THE TIME.

(Jesse intercedes again.)

It’s because you’re such a nice helpful mommy and you help us with these things.

[silent well aren’t you just the smug little la-dee-da-dee]

(quick exit to car for drive to school, because I bribe my minions with “fruit” roll-ups. Total junk, full of processed sugar and carcinogenic dyes. They should be called what they are. We call kale “kale” and apples “apples.” We should call rolled up dyed sugar strips “dyed sugar roll-ups.” Anyway, it’s a perfect way to start the day in America. As we’re walking Jesse to the school doors, a friend of hers appears and they walk in together. Nick takes the opportunity to shove his fingers in the friend’s face. She tolerates it, as she has a million times before. Nick and I say good bye and walk back to the car.)

Nick, I have told you a thousand hundred million times to NOT DO THAT TO PEOPLE. IT IS NOT OKAY. NO ONE LIKES IT. NO. ONE. EVER. IF YOU NEED TO STICK YOUR [silent sticky f***ing] FINGERS IN SOMEONE’S FACE, STICK THEM IN YOUR OWN FACE [silent you little sh**]. NO ONE ELSE’S. EVER. [silent gosh I’m feeling awfully emphatic today]

(sniveling)

Okay mommy, okay okay.

(standing next to the car now)

I DON’T WANT TO DEAL WITH ALL YOUR [silent f***ing] BAD HABITS ON THE SCHOOL FIELD TRIP TODAY. I WILL BE SO ANGRY IF YOU SPEND ALL THAT TIME ON THE SCHOOL BUS AND ON THE FIELD TRIP TRYING TO STICK YOUR [silent f***ing] HANDS UP MY SHIRT AND TOUCH MY BUTT AND ALL THAT ANNOYING STUFF. I WILL BE SO [silent f***ing] ANGRY. [silent Carla, get a grip on yourself]

Okay mommy. Okay. [tiny voice] When we get home I will just go finish a time out.

(pulling into the driveway after totally silent drive home, which is very nice indeed)

Mommy, I will just leave you alone until you aren’t so angry with me, okay?

Wise little boy.

* * * *

I’m keeping it classy and batshit crazy in Wisconsin. I hope you are too, wherever you are.

Little Troublemaker

Did you know that Anthony and I once gutted a house by ourselves? We ripped out every single lathe-and-plaster wall in that little old house, and all the old insulation. We wore full-body Tyvec suits and asbestos masks, to avoid itchy and toxic stuff as much as possible. Our neighbors would eye us suspiciously as we carried out bags of debris in these get-ups. We looked like extras from movies about pandemic contagions.

We replaced every single fixture, receptacle, and electrical wire all the way back to the circuit panel, re-organizing and modernizing all the circuits as we went. Anthony cut out the top half of a non-structural wall between the kitchen and dining room using a sawzall and we turned the bottom half into an island-like separation. We determined the wall was non-structural by talking about it (“yeah, I think it’ll be fine”) and then nodding in agreement before Anthony reved up the saw. That was exciting. We installed insulation and drywall and windows and doors and kitchen cabinets. We built new aprons and stools and trim for all the windows. We laid tile all over the bathroom. We built a mantel for the fireplace. We recycled original baseboards; we stripped, refinished and repurposed them to build doorway surrounds and other trim.

We hired a plumber to replace all the plumbing, including the toilet stack, because ew. Just because I like to talk about poop doesn’t mean I want to touch it.

Then we moved to St. Louis and had a baby. Actually, now that I think about it, I renovated our kitchen in St. Louis while I was pregnant with Jesse. I remember our next-door neighbor having an anxiety attack while I wielded a circular saw in the back yard. I’m not sure what she was so worried about. I was only 5 months pregnant and there was plenty of clearance for my uterus.

I still have all the power tools and equipment, and lots of spare hardware in boxes that used to be well-organized. With two kids in the house, there’s little time for much DIY work. Still, sometimes a girl’s got to get her hands dirty. I decided last week that I needed to install an outlet next to an existing switch in our dining room. It was the right kind of project for me — not complicated, and limited in scope. I figured it would take me a few hours on Friday and Saturday, including a little extra time to read through my electricity books and make sure I was doing things right.

The work went relatively smoothly. Nothing caught on fire and I didn’t blow a single circuit, and also I didn’t catch any shocks on my own body, at least not for the first two days. I did have to cut out a larger chunk of drywall than I wanted to, because I couldn’t manipulate the old armored cable wiring into the new electrical box as easily as I had hoped, and I needed room to reach into the wall cavity. So I had to make some drywall repairs too. Those can take a while to do well.

How many tools does it take to install a single electrical outlet? This many:

The pry bars were for taking out the original electrical box, which was attached to a stud. The numerous screw drivers and pliers — well you know how it goes, you can never have enough of those things around. I really did use each of these tools. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have been spread all over the dining room floor when I was done. Except I can’t remember what I used the hammer for. Give me a moment to recollect.

Nope. No idea why I had the hammer out.

How many trips to the hardware store does it take to install a single electrical outlet? Final tally: five. Not bad. I spent about 40 dollars (including drywall repair materials), which is still substantially less than paying an electrician, and the job turned out pretty neatly:

it took two days to properly plaster over the drywall patch. Next up is sanding. i wont be able to do that for several days, so I pushed the new electrical box in and put the cover on for now. And then I noticed…

Huh. I guess when I was prying out the old box I must have damaged the opening on the right side. It’s hard to photograph. Can you see the little hole along the right edge? The electrical cover isn’t big enough. Why can’t they make the covers bigger? Why?

Looks like I’ll be taking the cover off and doing some more plaster work before I sand. Maybe it’ll take a couple more days, and maybe I need to buy a little more drywall compound. I guess it takes six trips to the hardware store.

And then I’ll be done. Except also I’ll need to touch up the paint. That’s right. I don’t have any matching paint handy, because it’s from the prior owner. Anyway the color is ugly. It looks like I’ll need to repaint the entire dining room. I better get some paint cards when I go back to the store for more drywall compound.

As I’m thinking this through, it occurs to me that the dining room is part of a great room, which includes the living room. So I’ll need to repaint that too. Also the great room walls are contiguous with the stairway walls, so I guess I need to repaint those too. It’s a staircase that turns 180 degrees halfway up, so that ceiling gets REAL high. I wonder how I’ll deal with that.

I know. I’ll just repaint the ceiling and the hallway at the top of the stairs too. If I do all that in one color, I can just use a roller and paintbrush taped onto a long, long stick (this is what duck tape dreams are made of).

If painting goes like it usually does for me, some paint drops will fall on the wall-to-wall on the stairs and upstairs hall floor. It’ll be ruined, but maybe that’s a good thing too. The carpet is ugly, and there’s hardwood under it. Might as well rip that up and refinish the wood floors. I bet I can do that in a couple weeks. I just need to rent one of those power sander thingies.

I should be done with this limited, uncomplicated little job in 6 to 9 months. I’m so glad I installed the new outlet. It’s already adding value and much-needed convenience to my life.

A.m. edition (listen closely for the sound of my brain cells dying off):

Mommy, what if there was no food?

Then we’d starve.

What if the only food was grass?

Then I guess we’d eat grass.

Would it give me a tummy ache?

Probably.

Why?

Because it’s grass. I think it’s hard to digest.

(thoughtful moment)

What if the only food was chicken?

Then I guess we’d eat chicken.

What if the only food was chicken AND grass?

Then I guess we’d cook chicken and grass stew.

What if the only food was flies?

Ew. But I think we’d catch the flies and try to cook them and eat them.

(fit of giggling)

I would NEVER eat flies!

You might if you were starving.

(thoughtful moment)

What if the only food was trees?

I don’t know, Nick. I’m not sure we can eat tree. I guess we’d try to see if we could boil some bark and get some nutrition out of it.

(stares out car window)

What if the only food was houses?

We can’t eat house.

But what if the only food was houses?

Then we’d starve to death.

Oh.

You know there are children actually starving to death in our world, Nick. That’s part of why I get so irritated when we throw away food. There are starving children who would LOVE to eat the food you think is disgusting.

(oh no I didn’t)

(oh yes I did)

(extended thoughtful moment)

We can really eat grass?

(silent treatment)

Why would grass give me a tummy ache?

(silent treatment)

Heeeey, why are we driving here? This is close to our house!

(silent treatment. Mommy wipes drool off her chin.)

I popped over to our neighborhood Ace hardware Saturday morning for a couple things I needed on a little DIY project. I parked in a nice big space without a car on either side, as I’m wont to do. Away from other cars so that I don’t feel cramped and unsafe. I went and did my bit of shopping. I walked out the storefront doors and saw another car getting in my car’s personal space. That’s my Passat on the right. Hello new car friend.

As I walked over with one hand under my jaw to keep my mouth closed, I observed the friendly car’s driver blithely closing her door and heading off toward the store. La la la. I stopped her. She tried to walk past me. I showed her the unusual proximity of our cars. She was a little hard of hearing but she finally got it. She said, “Oh. I was paying attention to the driver side to make sure I had enough room with the car on that side.”

I was befuddled. How did she do it? How did she get so close without smashing anything?

She must have been moving soooo slowly and carefully. How did she not notice she was rubbing inappropriately against my car?

We had a brief conversation. The lady (I’ll just call her Ann for no reason) suggested I call my insurance company. I answered grumpily. “My insurance company is irrelevant. I won’t be paying for anything. You need to call your company.”

She replied with a bit of shame in her voice. “I don’t know how. I don’t have a way to do that.” She pulled out her insurance card. As she handed it to me, she said sheepishly, “They told me I should always say it’s not my fault.” She looked me dead in the eye and added dryly, “It’s not my fault.”

That was weird. “But it is,” I answered, my grumpy ire rising. “My car was parked. It’s obviously your fault.”

She drooped. “I know. But they told me to say that.”

I started to feel pity for this sweet little old lady. I don’t know — and I’m not sure I care — if she was manipulating me. Ann was shorter than me. I’m always grateful to meet any full-grown human who’s shorter than me. It happens so rarely, and it corroborates the charts that say I’m in the fifth percentile for height, instead of in the zero’th percentile as often appears to be the case. Plus she wasn’t copping attitude. She just seemed a little addled as she kept muttering, “Guess I should have stayed home today.”

I called our little city’s non-emergency police number. As we loitered next to the cars, Ann fussed a bit and expressed a variety of concerns, but she was very pleasant. I told her not to worry about insurance until we saw how much damage there was when we separated the cars. After all, they were touching so delicately, like prepubescent teens holding hands. It occurred to me that we might just be able to get them apart without any major damage, but I wasn’t sure how. While we waited for the police to come, the blacktop got hot and Ann looked a little red. I suggested she take this opportunity to head into Ace and get her shopping done. She was happy to go. Meanwhile, I used my alone time wisely by taking photos and posting them on facebook.

A police officer finally arrived. Her son is in elementary school with Jesse so I know her. Nice woman. We chatted. She had a solution. She got in Ann’s car and turned the wheels hard to the left. The rubber on the right front wheel pushed on my car’s driver side and separated the cars by a couple inches. Brilliant. Then I crawled into my car from the passenger side and just pulled forward carefully. All done. Remarkably, there was not a dent to be seen, just a few new not-entirely-insignificant-but-also-not-material scrapes along the side of my car.

I didn’t have it in me to make this an insurance matter, to file a police report, or to even make Ann pay for a paint repair (she offered). She didn’t look like a wealthy woman. My car’s a 10-year-old beater that I’m probably replacing next year anyway. What’s a few more scrapes? When I told Ann not to worry about it, she hugged me full on. She was almost in tears. She held me tight and spoke earnestly into my hair. “Oh thank you, thank you. You’ll be on my prayer list tonight.” The police officer held Ann’s shoulder gently and asked her if she was okay, sizing her up to see if she should be driving. Ann was shaken and relieved and tired. I encouraged her to go home and get some rest, and also to drive very, very carefully in future.

I was ready to wipe my hands of this episode. I drove off quickly and got home to my electrical work, but I found I couldn’t leave Ann behind. My first instinct when I observed her advanced age was one of bias. Knowing nothing about her except that she was obviously having a bad Saturday, I had wondered immediately if she should be driving anymore. A couple friends on facebook had the same quick reaction to my post about this little bender. Indeed, Ann herself worried aloud to me about whether the police would take her license away. But is that fair? Would we have reacted the same way if she had been a mom in a minivan or a teenager or a middle-aged white man in a suit? I realized I wouldn’t.

As I struggled mightily with the electrical outlet I was working on, I got grumpier and grumpier. I’m supposed to respect elders, not shit on them just because of a minor parking lot bump up. On the other hand, I wondered if my compassion for Ann was looking in the wrong direction. What if she really is losing her faculties and next week she causes a terrible accident and hurts other peeps… I guess that would be on me since I let her walk away. Hmph.

Decrepit elders causing auto accidents is juicy news, like train wrecks and airline crashes. It’s easy to find reports that tell us elders “cause” more fatal car accidents than other age groups and ought to be grounded. Some pundits argue for refresher courses and tests to ensure a person can still drive capably. But maybe we all could use that.

I hunted about on Google. What I found suggests that the elder-menace on our roads is mythical. Check out this CDC fact sheet, published in 2011 and updated in 2013. The relevant factoid that caught my attention is this: “Per mile traveled, fatal crash rates increase starting at age 75 and increase notably after age 80. This is largely due to increased susceptibility to injury and medical complications among older drivers rather than an increased tendency to get into crashes.”

So. They don’t really get in MORE accidents. They’re just more frail.

Elder drivers are less likely to drive under the influence than other age cohorts; elder drivers are less likely to drive in poor driving conditions; elder drivers use their seatbelts more; and elder drivers don’t drive as far. These are good things.

Compare elder drivers to teenagers. Check out the related CDC fact sheet on teens. Teens behind a wheel are much worse news than elders. Run for your life if you see a teen careening through your residential neighborhood. I know I do.

Sure, some old people shouldn’t be driving. But the same goes for some not old people. Why are we so quick to turn on elders? My neighbor across the street is a delightful woman whose husband died several years ago. She’s probably somewhere in her mid-80’s. Yes, sometimes her memory isn’t that great and she gets a little confused, but that’s also true for me. As far as I can tell, she’s just as pulled together as me in this regard. She and I have had several conversations about her (adult) childrens’ assumption that she would move to a senior community after her husband’s death. She doesn’t want to. She won’t until and unless someone makes her. She doesn’t understand why they would want to relegate her to living with a bunch of old people, without her independence and her home of 40-odd years.

What would she do without her car? I need to spend some time thinking about this. Having a little parking lot bump-up made me grumpy for sure. But realizing I have a driving prejudice against elders has made me even more grumpy. It’s just not right. Bah. I need to make a change.

About a month ago I overheard Jesse and Nick as they played with dragon figurines in the living room. Nick’s little voice piped up. “We can’t get married yet because we haven’t fertilized yet.”

Eh? I peeked around the corner from the kitchen. The dragons were facing off. “I will fertilize you,” said Jesse’s dragon. “Fertilize fertilize fertilize.” Her dragon pecked Nick’s dragon in the mouth with each iteration.

Nick continued the play. “We need more babies! Shoot more fertilizer!”

I had to walk away.

I’ve wanted to have a straight-talking talk about sex for years, but something has always stopped me. I’m just not sure how to do it. This is not a conversation my parents ever had with me. I learned what sex is from my friend Robin in 6th grade, as we played on the playground swings after school.

That’s right. I was a child in the dinosaur days when, as an eleven-year-old, I could just stay after school to play before I walked home. Because no one was home. I would hang out, without any adult supervision, and play with Robin or anyone else who could stay after school. Then eventually I’d walk the half mile or so home, alone, and unlock the door and get myself a snack, alone. Sometimes a brother would come home, and my mom would come home from work a little before dinner time. It’s a miracle I survived.

What? Oh, sex. Right, so Robin told me about sex. It came out of the blue, and of course her communication had a prurient edge to it, the feel of a dirty secret — because my parents never, ever talked about it with me. I was stunned and grossed out. My mom never even talked with me about menstrual cycles or planned ahead for my first period. My grandma told me a bit about it, but it was all so confusing. I bled one day and thought I was dying. My mom nodded and handed me some sanitary pads. She didn’t even show me how to attach them to my undies.

At some point I swore to myself that I wouldn’t be the repressed parent. My kids would know what sexual intercourse is before they were three. Well, five. Maybe five. I’ve lost sleep about this. I’ve made plans, I’ve given it a lot of thought, I’ve considered different tactics and tried to settle on a course of action in introducing the topic.

Yet here I am with a nine-year-old and five-year-old, and until last week I hadn’t talked directly with them about sex yet.

In my own defense, Jesse has other issues we’ve been dealing with, and Nick is just suffering in ignorance in the wake of Jesse’s needs. I have taken jabs at some technical details. Jesse and Nick know babies come from fertilized eggs for most animals. They know each of them was made from a piece of mommy (egg) and a piece of daddy (sperm). Jesse even asked the key question recently (i.e., some time in the last year). “How does the piece of the daddy that becomes part of the baby get inside the mommy?”

Oh dear, I thought. But somehow, I still couldn’t bring myself to go the distance.

So I got a book recommendation, “IT’S SO AMAZING! A Book about Eggs, Sperm, Birth, Babies, and Families.” By Robie Harris and Michael Emberley. It took me months to get around to buying it, but I finally overcame whatever was stopping me.

This book is SO AMAZING. I don’t have to think about anything. I just have to read the words on the page, while sitting on the sofa with a child on either side of me.

It eases into the topic so smoothly. First it teaches anatomy — in cartoons with fun colors, but anatomically correct drawings. You see drawings of naked humans at all different ages, both genders. You learn about the parts of the body that are the same and different on boys and girls, the different parts that are on the inside and the outside. I discovered that drawings of the vulva make me uncomfortable. Not my thing. My mom never gave me a mirror and encouraged me to learn my body.

Jesse walked away without a word when we got to the page about male anatomy, but she came back the next day and asked to continue the book. Nick pored over the pictures with Jesse and then asked me, “Are there two kinds of penises? Which kind do I have?” We chatted about circumcision.

After several days of studying all the parts and staring at anatomical drawings and learning the names of things — ovary, fallopian tube, uterus, cervix, bladder, vagina, labia, clitoris, vulva, seminal vesicle, vas deferens, prostate gland, urethra, epididymis, scrotum, testicle, foreskin — the topic had become prosaic, clean, bored-sigh-inducing. Perfect.

Then we learned about the journey of the egg and the menstrual cycle, and then about the journey of the sperm out of the penis and erections, and then about the journey of the sperm through the female body.

Not once did the kids ask how the sperm gets there. I was amazed. I wasn’t sure how that final bit of news would go over.

This morning before school, Jesse wanted to read on, and we finally got to the pages describing sex. Nick wasn’t interested and wandered off to play with dinosaurs. The last piece of the puzzle was more like a little epilogue than a big bang. The sperm has to get inside the mom’s body, and the way in is the vagina, so there you go. The bodies get close, the penis ends up inside the vagina, and the race to the F-tubes begins.

“Really?” said Jesse. She wasn’t grossed out, freaked out, or zoned out. She was just curious. “That can happen?” We talked about it, not in much detail but just to get clear that, yes, the penis can go inside the vagina and that’s how the sperm gets on the right path in the hunt for an egg. We talked about love, intimacy. We talked about intra-family taboos.

And then it was time to go to school. It was like we had just learned how plants get cloned, or how hydrogen and oxygen combine to make water, or how 5 times 9 is 45.

All that worrying for no reason. All I had to do was buy this book. It has all the answers. I never have to worry about sex and my children again.

We were sitting at dinner tonight when we heard a noise.

“What’s that sound?” asked Anthony.

It was coming from over by the stove. “I just took the ribs out of the oven, I think they’re sizzling.”

“I don’t think so.” Anthony walked over, just past the stove and into the entry. “There’s water coming out of the ceiling.”

I raced upstairs. Nick had washed his hands and left the sink faucet on at full throttle. Twenty minutes ago. The sink drains slow.

“WHO LEFT THE WATER ON?”

Nick chased me upstairs. He answered my rhetorical question as I used four bath towels and the floor mat to mop up the flood. “Oh. Sorry. Sorry mom.”

We watched water pour out of the ceiling light fixture at the entry. We watched water drip around door frames at the entry and in the basement. We were surprisingly calm.

My children, like forces of nature, are destroying the house.