Rites of Passage

I remember being a young one and looking up to my brothers and sister and thinking they were so cool that they could do things I couldn't. Don was seven years older than me and he could ride his skateboard where ever he wanted, pushing off with his one foot and gliding down the big hills. Me? I could only sit on the thing and zoom down the driveway while hoping a car wasn't coming any time soon. Katharine was allowed to have her BFF come over and rock it out to the latest Lionel Richie LP with the door shut. Ben, well, Ben pretty much did whatever he wanted with Mike including climbing all the way to the top of the ginormous pine tree in our side yard.

In addition to all these cool things I was always jealous of the things they got to do at school, one of them being telling time. I always thought it was so neat that they could look at a circle with symbols and could read the complex lines that pointed to those mysterious numbers and it meant something. This is something that Aren mastered last year. It was almost liberating for him to not have to ask us for the time anymore...he could watch that clock and know how much longer it was until snack time. Over the past few weeks he's been adding to his time telling repertoire by thrwoing things in such as "half past" and "quarter to".

This morning as the sun was barely creeping up over the horizon Rick and I were woken up by Aren getting Tania out of her mini jail cell. They both ran in to our room and instead of being greeted with a lovely "Good morning!", all he got was, "Aren, what the freak! Do you realize what time it is?" He ran to find a clock and came back to report..."Three minutes to half past six." It took Rick and I minute to discern his new trick and to eventually chuckle.

So there you have it - Aren's latest rite of passage. And in case anyone wants to join us, I'm heading over to the park at twenty minutes to half past the time I ate breakfast at a quarter to when I do laundry.