Raw Drip

While I’m convinced that my children are cute, charming and insightful, I’m also convinced that they’re idiots – kidiots, if you will, since their idiocy is merely a temporary bi-product of their youth and inexperience, versus mine which is more of a life-long affliction. 

I’m not sure if it’s kidiocy or just latent brilliance, but lately, I’ve found that Adam and Tabitha have entered a new and fascinating stage in their communications with each other.  This new stage seems to involve speech patterns that are conversational in tone, but lack anything one could mistake for coherence or logic.   It’s like their minds are stringing together random thoughts, ideas & observations into a brain-vomit concoction of lengthy, non-sensical statements spouted endlessly in a rapid-fire style.   To the old or uninitiated, the kids’ statements smack of sheer kidiocy.  But I’m convinced that brilliance lurks beneath the surface of all this mental & verbal diarrhea. 

The reason, you ask?  Well, they seem to understand each other.  For two people who spend most of their waking hours arguing – often very coherently – with everyone, they’re in nearly unanimous, enthusiastic agreement about a broad assortment of topics that I can’t seem to comprehend.  Surely, that much kidiocy must eventually flip and become brilliance, right?

Maybe it’s a sign of their brilliance that their intricate conversations feel very exclusive.  Foolishly on my part, I try to insert myself into their conversations – to seem like I can understand and contribute.   But soon it becomes apparent that I’m out of my league.   I fail to grasp the essence of their thoughts and am left feeling, instead, like an outsider; like some hired help who is driving the escaped idiots home from the asylum and trying desperately to understand them as they hatch their diabolical plans for world domination while speaking Ket. 

To further my point, an example is in order.  Below is a sample “conversation” that occurred as I drove the children around in the mini-van recently. 

Adam: Tabitha, you can’t eat ice cweam on da moon.

Tabitha:  No, you can’t – because mommy  & daddy will be angry with you and you’ll need to go to time out.

Adam: Wight…time out and den you’ll have to eat ants and mawshmallows mixed togethew AND all youw salad, or you won’t get a tweat.

Tabitha:  And, if you don’t get a treat, you can’t play with Derek at school, because Derek called the teacher ’stupid’ and now he’s not going to go fishing in the river.

Adam: Because Wogan, the dog, he’s too old to go to a basebaw game and if you feed him Cheetos, they’ll make him sick.

Tabitha: Yeah…and sometimes, I have to tell the teacher that I need to go to the bathroom and she says I have to wait my turn for it to be green when it’s night time, right Adam?

Adam: Wight!

Huh? 

My children’s conversations unfold like surrealist art- like the images and thoughts that fire randomly in a dream state.  And yet, it’s a conversation characterized by an odd fluidity that I find lacking in many of my adult interchanges.  Go figure.  All I know is that, as the mere driver of the mini-van of fools, my time with them is short.  Soon they won’t even want me to drive them around, or be seen with me, and that is something I’ll sadly understand, all too well.  So for now, I’m going to stop trying to understand what my kidiots are saying and just enjoy the banter, and the ride a little longer.  If that makes me the driver and the fool, well, so be it.