This week, I drove my son and two neighborhood brothers to the pool.

These boys are the resourceful kind who will dismantle your fence to use the slats as a ramp for their off road remote control vehicles, or will scale the newly shingled roof of your house simply because they suddenly noticed it, or accidently shift your van out of park, roll it backwards into the neighbor's chain link fence and while sitting in the driver's seat, appear innocently surprised when asked how it happened. The very illogically logical boyness of them is both comical on a good day & difficult on a not so good one.

But it was a good day - the day they tumbled in to my car, all hair, pubescent energy and stories.

'I ate 28 cotton candies at the hardware store open house Sunday!' the younger one proudly annouced.

I'm always looking for a laugh and good story so egged him on. '28 cotton candies?! How long were you there for?' I exclaimed.

Encouraged, he continued, 'All day! From 10-4!'

'Wow!' I responded, trying hard to drive & figure out the math division problem at the same time. 'So, you ate 4 and half cotton candies every hour?'

He thought briefly and corrected himself, 'No, I didn't start til noon, so I ate 7 cotton candies every hour!'

And then concluded somewhat introspectively, 'Ya, I guess that's why I got that bad headache!'

***

Life's little insights come in all flavours, sometimes as finely spun as 28 cotton candies...