Mathematically Speaking...

Growing up, I was the oldest of three siblings in my family. So, not only did I experience life from the Firstborn Perspective, but also quite a large age-gap separated me from my sister (7 years, to be exact). That meant, for one thing, that there just wasn't a whole lot of useful knowledge or applicable skills I could pass on from, say, a 12-year old to a 5-year old. I believe that's one reason why watching my own sons interact often warms my heart...while making me giggle. Riley (3 years younger) picks up on his brother's Middle School Humor (charming as that may be, currently providing a heavy rotation of Justin-Bieber-mocking jokes), Pre-Teen Boy Lingo (which can be an "epic fail" or "totally beast" depending on the situation--don't ask me, I'm studying, but not completely fluent yet), and even Academic Vocabulary. (This might explain why my 8-year old sometimes sounds like a little professor, such as when he requested to play with his DS until 8:45 before school, was granted the extra time, and responded matter-of-factly, "Thanks, Mom! I love privileges.")

During the course of Homework Time, Riley gets exposed to whatever concepts Derek happens to be working on in class. For instance, Derek has been learning about integers, and how to perform mathematical operations with positive and negative numbers. One night as he tackled his homework, he told Riley he was dealing with equations. A puzzled Riley naturally wanted to know, "What's an equation?" So Derek read him the first problem from his worksheet: x + 7 = 1. Riley furrowed his brow in thought, and began talking it through out loud: "Hmm, it has to be a negative number...-6? Because isn't it just like saying 7-6=1?" Um...yeah. (Derek's response was a delighted, "Thanks, Riley, for the answer to #1!") But wait, it gets worse. A Facebook friend (who happens to be a High School Math Teacher), posted this cartoon, which I personally found hilarious. (Yeah, I know, total Dork Joke, what can I say?) I showed it to both boys and explained that it was funny because you can't take the square root of -1, thus by Math Definition it's called an "imaginary number"--get it, ha ha? And they kind of gave me the weak chuckle ("suuurrrre, Mom--whatever you say...") so I thought it would quickly be forgotten. But the next night, Husband was harassing Riley--I mean "horsing around in a typical roughhouse Male Fashion"--and when Riley decided he'd had enough, he declared that "Mom was now his Preferred Parent (his words, I am NOT making that up) and Dad was...the Square Root of Negative 1! Now, while we were all rolling around on the floor in hysterics that Riley had even A) memorized and B) thrown that term out there, we had to wonder: what does that even mean? Dad's Parental Ranking has sunk so low as to be...imaginary? Dad's not as important as a Real Number? What? (Man, Math Insults are their own brand of...confusing, aren't they?)

All I know is, I'm gonna watch my back, because Riley might come up with something even worse if I fail to retain his favor. Hold on, I have a great idea as to how I can cement the Permanent Preferred Parent designation! I'll just offer Riley some...pi! (Hahahahaha! Oops. I guess it's obvious where the Nerd Genes come from...but I still crack myself up!)