Well yet another stint for me as chauffeur (for my wife) and tutor (for the boy) tonight, and at my age and with my current aging brain and vision, I am clearly on borrowed time.  Ben is already explaining things to me I do not know, and he is in first grade and the older kids and Amanda are already touring nursing facilitates and imagining ways to take away my driver’s license.  My friend Randy and I used to joke about acting all senile and such when we got to this age as a prank, but dag nabbit (authentic old person lingo, or dag wabbit to use a Fuddism) it is far too risky to do as they are already planning our committals.  Why give them the ammo??

But tonight as Ben and I sat in the Panera doing his homework, I was amazed at how I was watching my wife shine through him.  He is looking up here, which was not the norm tonight as he had his nose in the book and was eating his soup, breaking concentration on the text only a couple of times. He was really laser focused, which is the mark of my wife.  He literally was impressive. It was a very proud experience for me, as focus upon the tasks at hand often evade me.  At 6 I wanted to goof off and at 52 I still do.  Heck, I didn’t even read a book for leisure until I was 26.  He is his mom’s son in this, and although he still manages to goof off (a lot) he also manages to evade trouble, showing clearly that the Mongold genes have what it takes to correct the defect in the Tirman ones, you know the ones that make us like to know principals.

But my hope and prayer for him is that he will get to the discipline himself of getting these things, like homework and the expansion of his mind, into his routine by habit and desire rather than by coercion. Right now I am not using coercion as much as I am using good old fashioned American bribery, but you get the point.  He needs to get this because he wants to, otherwise he really will be living with me forever.

Off to pick up Miss Daisy.

Goodnight my friends and God Bless!


Tommy+