At A Loss

There are times in my life that I'm just overloaded with information. There are just too many things being thrown at me for me to comprehend. And like a computer, I freeze up. This happened the first time I looked at the menu at The Cheesecake Factory and almost every time I go to Starbucks. I get so overwhelmed with words and thoughts that I shut down.

And sometimes this happens because someone has said something that is both extremely complicated and extremely stupid. So my responses run into each other in my head and get clogged on their way out. Like when someone tries to explain to me that WWE wrestling is real and Spencer Pratt is a relevant human being. My brain overloads and I don't know what to say.

Well, yesterday my son gave me one of those moments. He didn't say anything stupid, but it was definitely complicated. He told my wife and me that he had a friend named "Cigarette" who stole his hair and poked him in the eye. But Andrew was able to get the flag, so he won. And I had no idea how to respond. I opened my mouth, then closed it, then opened it again, then closed it again. I looked like a trout in slow motion. Then I turned to my wife and said, "I got nothin'."

I mean really... how do you respond to a sentence like that from a 3 year old? I can't say, "What have you been smoking?" That would be wildly inappropriate (and he wouldn't get the joke anyway). And I can't ask him where he heard it because, let's be honest... that's the first time anyone has ever said that. So we just said something about him being silly and then we moved on. But if he ever meets a kid named "Cigarette," I will not allow them to be friends. Half because Andrew predicted that his new friend would steal his hair and half because no one should ever have a friend named "Cigarette" outside of prison.