Tag: #sillyThings

Blame

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The other day, as we were getting ready to sit down to dinner, my son found “blame” on the floor. Apparently, someone (or something) had found it necessary to place blame on the floor after our recent game of Ransom Notes. Now, if you haven’t played Ransom Notes, it is a fun and creative game in which you use word magnets to respond to the prompt cards. Typically, the sentences are not full sentences, and grammar isn’t a thing. The best response of each round wins.

Luckily, I hadn’t vacuumed since we played, or blame would have been misplaced. Permanently. And no one would have been the wiser.

But back to blame…. In truth, placing blame on the floor seems a bit unfair. To the floor, at least. How can a floor be to blame? It couldn’t have acted alone. But come to think of it, the floor might have been in cahoots with gravity in which case I might have to adjust my thinking. Perhaps the floor should shoulder some blame after all.

Then again, gravity might have had a hand in placing blame on the floor to begin with. In that case, gravity is likely the more guilty party. The mystery remains, however, what exactly is the act for which blame is being placed? All of these questions simply because we found “blame” on the floor.

Fork in the Road

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The other day when I was out on my early morning walk, I happened to walk by a fork in the road. It was just there, in the middle of the road, tines up. And it happened to be directly in front of several not-quite-middle-school kids who were on the side of the road waiting for their bus. I stopped, took a couple steps backwards, and used my foot to brush-kick the fork over to the curb. The fork complained in a metal-on-pavement clangy whine.

“No one should run that over now,” I said, as much to myself as to the kids in the grass.

“Is that a fork?” one of them asked as he took a step closer and stretched his neck out to see what was resting just beyond the curb.

“Yes,” I replied. “Kind of silly, isn’t it? A fork in the road?” I would’ve kept going, pushing the puns, but I have enough experience with kids these days to know that wordplay is not really something that most families engage in anymore. In fact, conversation among family members is something that doesn’t happen nearly as much as it should thanks to all of the distractions of life.

As I walked on, I could hear the boy in the background yelling to his mother. “Hey mom! There’s a fork over here! Can you believe that?”

How sad, I thought, that he missed such a great opportunity to expound on the fork and its location. Meanwhile, as I walked, my mind was racing with possibilities. A fork in the road! How odd would it be if you had to tell someone you popped your tire on a fork in the road?