. . . and at the end of the day . . .
There was a story on the TV news recently that started out by stating that half of all accidents happen at night. I missed the entire context of the piece while I grappled in my head with the concept of the opening premise. Are there not only two halves to our 24-hour cycle --- day, and then night? Isn't half the time about right for half the accidents? Overlay that with the fact that night at this time of the year seems to be around 18 hours long. How could this even be news? Worse yet, upon further introspection, maybe they convoluted this by obfuscating the definition of 'night'. Factor evening, twilight, dusk, sunset, dawn, sunrise and daybreak hours out, and you end up with maybe four hours for a good, old-fashioned night. But half the accidents in that sliver in time? Never. By the time I decided to give them a chance to tell me what I had already decided I was not about to believe they had moved on. Good thing. I would have known better anyway.
I moved on to look at the weekly paper. Hey! Look at this - they have twelve-step program meetings for a group called Emotions Anonymous! What the heck...
At this point you should be thinking - 'pay attention dummy, you might learn something'. Indeed, that is my premise with the road traveled to get you this far. You see, I am blessed to spend quality time with an eight-year old anyone would consider lucky to get to know. During a recent 'leaving the house for school' conversation (you know the scenario - where's your backpack, why does little sister have only one sock, hurry, we are late...) when he asked about today's 'windshield'. Really, 'windshield'? Mathematically, this is usually the kind of time I would go into full 'half of all accidents happen at night' mode, after all, by then I was looking for two socks. But there was urgency to his question, and so, I spent a moment I thought we didn't have. When I looked in his eyes I knew - "JJ, its cold out. Take your sports gloves so you can catch a football and wear a hat that won't mess up the way you have your hair." After all, the windshield that day was below zero.
Now, if anyone can help me out with the Emotions Anonymous thing, please let me know.
*Weekly paper - a thing where they print various stuff on sheets of paper that they think people should know and then they deliver it to your home a couple of days later. Oh, never mind.
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