My six-year-old is discussing his future plans now that I’m expecting another child, another boy.

Son: “I have decided not to go away for college.”

Me: “Why, honey?”

Son: “Because the baby will need me.”

Me: “No, honey. By the time you go to college, he won’t need you anymore. He will be grown up.”

Son: “No, Mommy. He will be thirteen, and he will need me.”

Me: “He won’t need you at that age.”

Son: “Yes, he will, because you won’t remember what it’s like being a teenager because dementia, and I will.”

Ouch. Thanks, kid.

In the 1990s, my mother, like many women across America at the time, was a regular user of Cindy Crawford’s Shape Your Body, the VHS workout video. My mom is a lovely woman and very pretty, but she went into the workouts thinking that was all she needed to do to look like Cindy Crawford.

One Saturday morning, my sister and I heard the music of the VHS workout starting from our rooms. Five minutes in, we heard the VHS pause, followed immediately by the sounds of our mother panting loudly. My sister and I both wander into the room to see Mom sitting on the floor in front of the TV, covered in sweat.

Me: “Five minutes? That was fast.”

Sister: “Mom, you okay? You’re panting like a dog.”

Mom: *Between panting.* “It’s… a hard workout! You… haven’t tried it… so you don’t know.”

Me: “Well, good luck!”

Mom goes two weeks before trying the VHS again. This time she makes it to seven minutes.

Me: “Well done, Mom! New record!”

Sister: “We’re proud of you!”

Mom: “Shut up.”

A whole month passes, and Mom is back to five minutes again.

Mom: “That’s it, I’m returning this. It’s defective.”

Sister: “I don’t think you can. It’s been too long.”

Me: “What makes you think it’s defective?”

Mom: “It’s not working!”

Me: “But you’ve barely been trying.”

Mom: “I have!”

Me: “You’ve had it for almost two months, and you’ve done three five-minute workouts.”

Mom: “That’s how you know it’s defective! It should make you want to work out more! Not less!”

Sister: “What if the workout video had Kevin Costner instead?”

Mom: “Hmm… let’s just say your momma wouldn’t be working out to that video in the living room.”

Both Of Us: “Ewwww, Mom!”

I am having a discussion with my four-year-old kid. Please note that we are not Christians.

Four-Year-Old: “Mom? What is paradise?”

Me: “Paradise? Oh. That’s the world’s best place, the best place you can imagine.”

My kid sits quietly and thinks for a few moments.

Four-Year-Old: “Mom. You are paradise!”

My teenager has two friends with interesting chest formations: one has pectus carinatum (“pigeon chest”; his chest sticks out a little) and the other has pectus excavatum (“sunken chest”; his chest goes in a bit). Neither is noticeable with their shirts on, but both boys have told their friends as interesting trivia about themselves.

What did my child do with this information? Ask if they thought they would fit like puzzle pieces.

And the friends decided to find out. Turns out, yes, they do fit very well!

My husband was horrified that our child had committed some sort of faux pas or worse by suggesting the idea, despite assurances that the boys were totally on board with the idea and found it hilarious.

Or, in teenage speak: “Geez, Dad, one of my friends put part of his body into my other friend’s body. Stop making it weird.”

I’m the author of this story and was reminded of another experience with my parents.

I am very much an introverted, stay-indoors nerdy type. Half the reason I was fine with just my bedroom being a temperature I enjoy growing up is that I’m spending most of my time in there anyways, reading books and playing games on my handheld consoles. That’s not to say I don’t enjoy the home consoles, but my parents did their best to limit my gaming time on the TV to an hour at most. I’m not sure whether they were disapproving of my gaming tendencies or if they just had other stuff they wanted to use the TV for.

There is an annual week-long break at my school, smack in the middle of February. I would love nothing more than to spend all day playing games, especially if I happened to have Christmas presents that I hadn’t finished yet.

My parents eventually came up with an idea: as much time as I spend outside, I will get to play video games. They start a stopwatch when I leave the house, and when I come back, they mark a tally. Whether they were trying to get me to be more physically active or just trying to limit how much gaming the introverted nerdy me could do, I had no idea.

The thing is, they forgot I’m the abominable snowgirl.

So, I’d march out into the snow… with a bag full of books. I’d stomp a snowdrift into a shape I can read in with my back to the sun, sit down, and open up my first book. The next thing I know, my mom’s calling me inside because it’s dinnertime. And the next day, I’d sit in front of the TV and game my heart out until I’d spent the accumulated time.

They’d wised up by middle school and told me I could just spend the week gaming, but why would I ruin a good thing?