Contrails

Jason is a great dad. That said, he drives me crazy. He believes that children should never feel like their parents don't know all the answers, but he is too lazy to Google things. He makes things up and forgets to explain afterwards. He finds it amusing that kids take your every word seriously.

This is a bad, bad combination.

He once told one of the toddlers, after I had blown up over finding yet another booger smeared on the wall, that if they ate them, mommy would stop yelling. Although I haven't seen a booger since, it was the most disgusting problem solving method I've ever come across.

Liz slept in our room for a week after we had our floors done. She walked in and admired the brand new pseudo-wood, to which Jason's response was to be careful. Laminate flooring breeds lampires, a special breed of demon that crawls out of the floors at night and sucks your blood. She was 10 at the time, but apparently the mental picture was too much for her to handle. I made her sleep on his side of the room.

When Isaiah was 4, there were a few weeks in the summer where I though he'd gone simple. Every time a plane flew by, he would roar with laughter, nearly hysterical in his glee. I didn't get it.

Other airborne objects didn't turn him in a gibbering fool. Helicopters didn't make him titter. Seagulls didn't give him the giggles. I had never seen him snicker in delight at the appearance of a helium balloon. Not a single guffaw over kites at the park. Odd.

I finally became frustrated enough to ask Jason about the airplanes.

"Oh, that." he smiled, "I forgot about that. He asked me why planes left contrails in the sky. I didn't know, so I told him that planes are pressurized. Airplane food makes people fart, and all that extra air being released into the cabin could make the plane explode. So at the back of the plane is a tiny vent, and every time someone farts, they open the vent and let the fart out. That way, the plane doesn't blow up, and nobody dies from the smell. Now every time he sees a contrail, he loses it. It's kind of cute."

That man needs to be supervised.