Cute kid but . . .

    My son, whenever he hears it, usually takes flight into the house, leaving me alone with the kid next door.

    It's not that he's a bad kid. He's as harmless as a puppy and four times as cute. Most of the time he pedals back and forth on his driveway riding a tiny trainer-wheeled bicycle, making engine noises and narrowly missing his dad's cars and subsequent date with certain doom.

    But whenever I step outside, he immediately makes a bee-line for me. I must be his best source of entertainment - a never ending fountain of amusement and information.

    And like most three-year-olds his age, he's a non-stop seeker of the truth.

    "What doin'?" he asked, staring up at me as I flipped a cindered burger on the barbecue grill.

    "I'm fixing my car" I answered.

    He stared at me curiously, turned and looked at my car parked in the open garage.

    "Nope." he said. "Makin' supper."

    "Yep, that's right little guy. I'm making supper."

    I knew precisely what his next question would be.

    "Why?"

    Language theorist Noam Chomsky was the first to propose that language was "hard wired" into human beings - that people were born with brain circuits predisposed to facilitate learning to speak. I think the question "Why?" is also an intrinsic part of the biology of three-year-olds - not to facilitate learning but more to annoy the heck out of old guys next door trying desperately to get a burger in his belly.

    "Because if I don't feed my family, they'll die of starvation and the police will come and put me in jail and somebody else will come and buy this house and they won't even let you play basketball in the driveway like I do."

    His face brightened. "You wanna play basketball?"

    Even if I hadn't been making supper, I wouldn't play basketball with the kid. I mean, every time I do, I just destroy him. He can't hit a shot from inside or outside. He has no sense of defense.  And because he's about three feet tall, taking it to the net is pretty well out the question.

    He ain't got game.

    "Nah, I don't think so."

    "Why?"

    "Cause you still owe me 50 cents, a bottle cap and a sparkly stone from the last time we played."

    He quickly turned the conversation. " Fell down," he said, and pointed to a small scratch on his little leg. "Hurts."

    "Yeah, I got an owie too. I have to deal with a bit of a pain in the butt right now."

    "Big owie," he offered, gazing at my backside.

    "How old are you kid. Really."

    He stared at me blankly. And then out of the blue said "Going home. Bye"

    He turned to leave.

    I couldn't help it. I just had to say it.

    "Why?"

    He stopped and looked back at me as if I had just broken every rule in the game. And then without a word, his feet again pummeled across the driveway towards home.