Category: Random

Memory foam

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This weekend, I took my daughter to get some new sneakers for the P. E. class she will have through the new semester. We went to a store not far from our house where they were having a buy one pair, get the 2nd for 50% off. She found some sneakers she liked, and began the search for her size, 6.5.

I don’t really need shoes, but I tried some on, just for kicks. I started with a 7.5, which was large, so I moved to a 7. While I found the memory foam insole quite appealing, the shoe was a bit big and gappy on my foot. (Since I’ve had children, my feet have shrunk. Most women say the opposite is true, which proves that I am an anomaly). Needless to say, we left the store with only my daughter’s new sneakers.

On the drive home, she asked me why I didn’t buy any shoes. “50% off, Mom. You could have gotten some shoes for yourself.”

“But I don’t really need shoes,” I told her. “I tried some, but the 7 was a little big, and the 6.5 probably would have been too small.”

“Wait…” she paused while she thought about what I had just said. “If you can wear a 6.5 shoe, that means I can wear your shoes!” She said this as if she were making a great announcement. “You could have gotten some new shoes, and I could wear them!”

All the more reason not to buy some shoes, I thought, but instead, I quickly built upon her newfound realization. “And that also means that I could wear your new sneakers!”

“But you wouldn’t,” she stated with matter-of-fact certainty.

“Why not? I like the shoes you just picked out. They’re a nice color.”

“Mo-o-o-m!” she drew out in that teen tone that borders on a whine, but isn’t quite. “That’s gross.”

“What’s gross? It’s gross for me to wear your shoes, but not for you to wear mine? How is that different?”

“Well,” she began in her best voice of authority. “When you wear my shoes, you will mash down the memory foam, and it won’t be any good any more.”

“Wow. Did you just call me fat?” I teased. “Really? I don’t weigh that much more than you.”

“Mom, I weigh 76 pounds…”

“84,” I corrected. “Nice try, but that’s not the way memory foam works. It doesn’t remember who was in the shoes last. It’s called memory foam because it remembers… well…. Okay, I don’t really know. But I won’t ‘break’ it just because I wear your shoes.”

By this point, we were both laughing. Back when the kids were little, I used to be able to make up the details I didn’t know, and they didn’t question it. Today, that’s not so easy.

Truly, I have no idea how memory foam works, but I know that “memory foam” is not a good name for it. There is no “memory” of who used it and how they used it. But I do know this: if you’re going to try to reason with a teenager, you should probably know what you’re talking about! (Unlike me….)

Calculations

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One never knows what is going to happen at the dinner table in my house, nor how that information might be used in future conversations. We have discussions that range from the sublime to the absurd, and everything in between. And the conversations tend to wander from one end of that spectrum to the other—often multiple times over the course of the same meal.

On Friday night, the boys became engaged in a conversation that was both entertaining and thought provoking. Dinner was going along smoothly until one of them dropped some food on the floor and started pondering the edibility of the morsel in question.

The next thing I knew, the older brother had pulled out his napkin, and was working through a formula to determine whether or not one should remove food from the floor and eat it. His napkin was the paper on which he was composing his formula—writing out the variables involved in making the necessary “calculations.”

The younger boy watched critically as his brother developed this idea, throwing in some of the factors he believed to be important. C had based his calculations on an “average bedroom floor,” using food on a plate and (basically) food in the cats’ litter box as his extreme conditions.

“Wait! Let me show you mine!” W said, grabbing the pen from C. The wheels in his head sped up, formulating, calculating. He developed a complicated equation in which one variable was “harmful life forms per square centimeter,” and another was “time in contact.” There were others, as well as a series of unknowns over other unknowns. They bantered back and forth as they considered whether they had covered all of the important elements.

Ultimately, the bite that fell on the floor made its way to the trash. Through it all, the boys were laughing and carrying on about various funny (i.e. “disgusting”) things that could happen to the food to affect edibility.

In my mind, I had to consider how this incident might have been different if I had been eating with two girls. The girls would have immediately picked up the food, thrown it out, and cleaned up the floor.

But in the interest of developing the boys’ talents at creating new formulas, I have some ideas. On Monday morning, I was texting my daughter—who spent the weekend with her father. I told her I missed her. She said she missed me more. “Tough to know,” I texted. “We can measure later.”

Perhaps the boys could write a formula for that.

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Hairless cats

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“When you grow up, I’m going to buy you a hairless cat!” my daughter taunted her younger brother this morning, in a way that implied this was the ultimate curse.

My youngest, unfazed that he would be saddled with a non-cuddly pet at the hands of his sister, snickered and continued eating his breakfast. He didn’t even look up from his cereal.

“It’ll jump up on your lap, and you’ll want to pet it, but you won’t want to touch it,” my daughter continued. “It’ll rub up against you, wanting attention, but it’ll be like holding a wrinkly, newborn baby—a naked, PURRING baby!” Hmm… having held a newborn baby or two in my time, I can’t say that would be a terrible thing. But it wouldn’t actually be a baby….

“You’ll have to put on lotion to touch it!” I’m not sure if she meant on himself or on the cat….

Seriously. I have no idea where that last thought came from. I did once have a cat that pulled out all of his fur, a nervous habit, and I called the vet to see if he needed sunscreen. But lotion? Perhaps a hairless cat would get dry skin in the winter. Interesting. I am always fascinated by the direction conversations take in our house.

This particular conversation emerged from a series of disagreeable discussions that J and her older brother had engaged in since they met up at the breakfast table. Finally disgusted, she turned her attention to her younger brother to have some more jovial interaction. We had been talking about who was occupying the wrong seat at the breakfast table; how annoying the morning singing was; and a plethora of other seemingly meaningless topics when she announced that she was going to be a crazy cat lady when she grew up. Then, the hairless cat idea began to emerge.

While the morning had not been going well, this conversation—just as I was getting ready to walk out the door—turned my mood around. As I drove off to work, I was still giggling about the hairless cat, and the “punishment” she would bestow upon her brother when they were older….