VivaCity

On the way home from daycare yesterday, my insatiatably curious 3-year-old and I had the following conversation...

Spence..."Will you read this book to me?"
Me..."Not right now, honey."
Spence..."Why?"
Me..."Because I'm driving."
Spence..."Why you driving?"
Me..."Because we need to get home."
Spence..."Why we going home?"
Me..."Because it's dinner time."
Spence..."Why it's dinner time?"
Me..."Because that's what TIME it is."
Spence..."Why that's what time it is?"
Me..."Well...Back in Greek and Roman times, they didn't have any sort of timetable whatsoever, except for knowing when the sun rose and set and by this they lived their lives, but of course those times bred great forward-thinking masterminds of science and together they arrived at the conclusion that it would be wise to assign numerals to each passing segment of each day and to give these segments names. So they devised great machines, like large dials, which filtered the sunlight according to it's position in the sky and the dial would turn and thus they were able to put a number on that valuable concept called time and THAT is what we today refer to as what time it is."
Spence... ... ...Silence from the backseat for approximately 30 seconds...You could HEAR the synapses firing...Then..."You wrote this book?"

When I stopped laughing long enough to steer the car back onto the road, I realized that it will be a sad, sad day indeed when my sweet innocent boy realizes that I am not The Person Who Knows The Most in this world. I will mourn the day when I am unable to answer his trigonometry question or tell him matter-of-factly the purpose of life. There are so many things I myself have yet to learn, it seems a bit scary to me that someone else's knowledge is being built upon the foundation that I have yet to complete. I hope he pushes off from my measly foundation and skyrockets, I really do, and someday I will ask him something out of innocent curiousity, and he will look down (physically) at me and answer my naive question. Or perhaps, fulfilling my dream as the next generation seems so often to do, I'll find myself reading the book he has written, his contribution, and my trip 'round the sun will not have been in vain after all.