What’s In A Number Anyway

Posted by He Said

This last week there has been an unusual focus from the kids on numbers.  I don’t know if it has to do with what the kids are studying in school, a change in what Susanne and I are asking of the kids, or that Susanne has been counting the stacks of $100 bills we have been saving since we moved out of the house.  Regardless there has been a lot of Braedyn walking around the house counting by 1, 10, 20 and even by 100’s as high as he can go.  And he can count high, let me tell you. As proud a parent as it makes me to hear him get started, it’s a little like listening while sober to someone sing “Bottles of beer on the wall” and counting down from one billion.  Yeah.  It really is a little like that.

Just a few days ago, we were all sitting around in our family time circle.  For newcomers this is me on the couch with my iPhone and/or laptop, Susanne at the dining table on her laptop AND iPhone and both the kids either watching a movie, or playing on their iPods.  Like I said, family time, I mean we are all in the house at once, what more can you ask for.

So there we are, enjoying family time and Braedyn starts counting by 1,000’s.

“One thousand, two thousand, three thousand” and no, I will not edit this for brevity, if I have to live through it, then so do you, “four thousand, five thousand, six thousand, seven thousand, eight thousand, nine thousand and one MILLION!”

He looked at me with an ear to ear grin, just bursting with pride.  He was SO thrilled with himself and looking for confirmation of his grand feat, and what does this un-father of the year do?  I look at him, tell him, great job, but “after nine thousand comes ten thousand.” 

He pauses for a moment and says “No dad, when you count to one thousand by one hundreds there are no ten one hundreds, so there are no ten thousands.”

Now this is logic that is hard to argue with. I mean when you think about it, he has a point.  There are ten 1’s when counting to ten and there are ten 10’s when going to 100 and there are ten 100’s when you are going to 1,000.  So who am I to argue that somebody really screwed up this counting thing and that Braedyn’s logic is sound. But I tried to explain that there really were 10,000’s and more on the way to one million.  All I did was make my son feel bad.  I took note of this, slotted it in the back of my mind in the section “thing’s NOT to correct my son about”  and said, “well, ask about it in school and let me know. “  End of the argument and we all returned to family time.  I don’t think I ruined him for life.  I won’t know till he calls from from jail to bail him out.  That will likely wait till he is at least 18.

As I said, this has been the week of numbers.  Saturday the three of us (Susanne had left me yet again, and yes, she came back) were on our way to get a little high.  Doughboy Donut sugar high that is.  Nothing like an angel cream stuffed chocolate covered donut to start the day.  Halfway to our destination Braedyn pipes up with a comment about lines of cars being the definition of traffic. I of course was shocked that he was focused on SOMETHING, ANYTHING other than how to piss his sister off in the car. So I jumped on the opportunity to keep the conversation going.

Me: “Yes, technically the cars don’t have to be in a line to be traffic, there just have to be lots of cars on the road to be a lot of traffic.”
Braedyn: “Like in China where there are lots of cars?”
Me: “Yes, and in China there were thousands of cars on the road, wasn’t there?”
Braedyn: “Yeah, maybe millions, or even billions!”
Me: “Yeah, maybe!”

Emily had been strangely quiet up to this point, and I was wondering if she was even paying attention when she pipes in with “or maybe more, maybe one hundred and three!”

This time I kept my mouth shut, I mean, what’s in a number anyway.