My Rotten Blog

I had to share this little story about my four-year-old son Jackson. For anyone that hasn't met him, this is a pretty typical story in the daily life of my son. He is something of an enigma to his parents, but we don't hold that against him.

The other day we were all in the kitchen cleaning up after dinner. I was doing the dishes and my wife was emptying the dishwasher. The kids were jumping around and vying for our attention in their own ways.

I turned to my son and asked him to take a pair of grill tongs outside and put them by the grill. He happily grabbed the tongs and made his way towards the front door. Upon reaching the door, he found that the screen door had been locked. Being only four years old, he was confounded by the complexity of a locked screen door. Being my son, Jackson decided that instead of asking for help, or wasting time trying to decipher the mysteries of a latch-lock, a more direct approach was required. At this point he put the tongs down, backed up about ten feet, took a deep breath and started running as fast as he could at the locked door.

When my wife caught him about two feet from slamming full speed into the screen door, he looked at her as if she was crazy for stopping him. When we asked him what he was doing, he simply replied that "The door won't open".

I had to hide my laughter.

It's November and besides it being the time of year when I can look forward to overeating, football and the beginning of a long, cold Chicago winter, it's also National Novel Writing Month. NaNoWriMo as it is so moniker-ed, was started in 1999 by a guy who wanted to write a book. He did, and since then, millions of people have taken the challenge to write a 50,000 word novel during the month of November. I've been wanting to try it myself for a couple of years, but never did. This year, I decided to give it a shot.