Absurdly Normal

Sometimes I wish I lived in a house of average IQ’s, where personalities and habits are standardized by Pavlovian training. Alas, this is only sometimes, when all I want to do is close my eyes and sleep but my husband wishes to lecture on the subject of the way to measure the density of the Earth in two ways. First, by using Galileo’s method of measuring acceleration caused by the Earth’s gravity field (which is by the way: the speed of a ball descending on an incline plane, using musical scales as a measurement of time) and then using Newton’s Gravitational Constant (I’m not explaining that one.)  

I wish normalcy when my son, Koolaid, cannot relate to other children because one he’s scarily intelligent. Two he has Autism Spectrum Disorder(on the high functioning end),therefore, he sometimes lacks basic social skills.  

Cocoa, the middle child, is our public face but  as soon as she enters our house, she is as weird and unruly as the rest of us . She is a perfectionist: A thousand crumbled paper mermaids lay at my feet because the tail must be just right. She likes to tie things to other things. I see a career in it or a lot of therapy  in her future. Possibly both.

Shirley Temple, my youngest, makes me wish we were normal most of all. When you ask her what she wants to eat, she’ll say disturbing things like, “Elves. Elves sound delicious” and will insist that Elves are the only thing she wants to eat. I’m partly to blame here. I constantly give crazy answers to their questions in hopes that they will leave me to my Syrah in peace.  

Dear normal people, does your daily life include conversations such as these?

Overheard at home: 
Koolaid:"I'm going to shoot you with my laser!"
Cocoa: "Can't immune."
Kooliaid: "I'm going to blast you with my bomb!"
Cocoa: "Nope immune."
Koolaid: "Well, how can I destroy you?"
Cocoa: *sigh* "I've had my shots, so I'm immune to everything."

At the grocer store: 
Clerk: "Are you being good for Santa?"
Shirley Temple: "Santa is dead!"
Clerk: "Uh, what?"
Cocoa: "She means the real Saint Nicholas, the patron saint of children."
Clerk: "Oh jeez, I was beginning to think she was scary."
Koolaid: "She IS scary but that's not the point

Tequila Sunrise, Cocoa, and Koolaid argued for an entire weekend about if mermaids exist. Cocoa is pro-mermaid. Tequila and Koolaid are definitely not. To end the debate, they asked me. I thought about it for a minute and said, “Well, we don’t know if there is life on other planets. If there is, it is a possibility to have a race of merfolk on one of them.”

Blinded them with science.

Ralph Ellison said, “I knew that it was better to live out one’s own absurdity than to die for that of others.” This is what I reflect upon when I all I want to do is be normal.

 

p.s. Tequila Sunrise worked out the density of the Earth. The answer is: 5.5 grams per cm3