I’ve noticed a pretty significant change in Son #2.  It’s not his height. It’s not his weight.  Hell, it’s not even his social aptitude, or lack thereof.  It’s how much he talks. It. Never. Stops.

I had Mr. Mom time over the last few days.  Not only did that amount to ‘boy time’ as Son #1 categorizes it, but it also warranted me a careful evaluation of the behavior of these children.  The bar was set low; my wife had one request of me.  That’s one ‘formal’ request.  There are always the silent unspoken understandings of not burning the house down, not shooting the neighbor’s chickens with a pellet gun, no statues of the Lady of Guadalupe in the front yard, and no cookies for dinner (is breakfast OK?).  But the ‘formal’ request was to fill out some sort of form with questions about Son #1.

In any event, the form is only context here.  The real story is the questions on the form; Questions on vocabulary, imagination, comprehension and the like. While I struggled answering the questions in this context, I concluded how easy it would be to answer these for Son #2.  The reason for this deductive conclusion was two things.  The first is obvious; Son #2 is pretty imaginative and creative (more on this below).  And second, he wouldn’t shut up so there was absolutely no way I could ignore him while I attempted to answer the form’s questions.

What became painfully clear were his machine gun-like conversation abilities and I wasn’t going to be able to ignore him. He never stopped talking.  While that was a challenge in and of itself, the real hurdle was his use of the word ‘Dad.’  It was all of the time.  At the start of every sentence.  At the end of every sentence.  In the middle of every sentence.  Sometimes two times in a row to get attention.  Sometimes in an elevated tone to make a point.  Sometimes…well, it was a lot.  My ears still hurt while I’m writing this.

I was trying to work from the home office but it was pointless given the verbal assault I was taking.  So I thought to myself, “Self, you should count how many times he says ‘Dad’ in an hour.”  I’m not going to get any work done so let’s have a little mundane fun.  Because his mind and tongue were in perfect harmony with thoughts being directly spat out by his mouth, there was no time to waste.  I jumped up and grabbed a notebook and a pencil to scratch down the collection of raw data.  This was market research at its best. For this to have truly been accurate, I would’ve needed a hand-held clicker to keep up with the frequency of his ‘Dads.’ 

From my crude data collection techniques, I recorded 82 ‘Dads’ in the course of 60 minutes and I think this was a down day. Those of you who are professional statisticians may find my sample size too small.  However, let me challenge you to sit in the same room with Son #2 when he’s telling his stories. It’s like a 50-cailber peppering of words, sounds, hand gestures, and arm waving.  He’s hugely imaginative in his story telling.  I learned everything there is to know about Skylander Giants, being Player 1 in a video game, being Player 2 in a video game, being player 5 in a video game, Bouncer is his favorite Skylander Giant and he’s SOOOOOO happy to have him, Hot Dog the fire Skylander is coming to Earth next week, Bouncer has upgrades that make him shoot lasers out of his eyes and missiles out of his fingers (insert childish laser and missile sound effects here), the Skylander Giant named Swarm is his brother’s, he really wants Lightcore Prism Break because he shoots blue crystals out of his arms, there are two maps for Skylanders and Skylanders Giants, and many more things that I’ll spare you from listing here.

And now, back to the data. I recorded 82 ‘Dads’ in 60 minutes.  Let’s break this down:

Number of ‘Dads’: 82

Time elapsed: 60 minutes

‘Dads’ per minute = 82 / 60 = 1.367 per minute

‘Dads’ per second = 1.367 / 60 = 0.023 per second

Time between ‘Dads’ = 1 / 0.023 = 43.9 seconds

That means every 44 seconds in the course of an hour, Son #2 said the word ‘Dad.’

People like to count ‘Ums’ and ‘Uhs’ during speeches and interviews on TV.  I just chose to collect a little data from a more relative source.  Son #2.  And let me tell you from personal experience, the challenge of recording the word ‘Dad’ was a big one.  Even the sharpest of minds and fleetest of data recording would’ve been challenged to hold serve in verbal court with Son #2.  Maybe it wasn’t the most productive thing to do for an hour but it did stop me from agonizing over some ridiculous work emails request marked ‘Urgent’ that I needed to respond to or the world might end.  Instead, it became a sport of adventure and a distraction from the monotony of professional life.  If nothing else, it was entertaining and laughable.

And most importantly, in the essence of saving our livers, I won’t be making a drinking game out of this.  We won’t swill a beer or take a shot after each ‘Dad.’  That would not be wise. But it would make the conversations more challenging to follow.