When a Four-Year-Old Is Wiser Than His Mama

Just before seven o'clock this morning, I was ill-advisedly dressing for the Y. I was due to teach two classes back-to-back--my usual one and another for which I had agreed to sub. And I was sick, so sick. Fever, coughing, achy muscles, the whole she-bang. Finding a sub just seemed so...so daunting...I was just going to suck it up and do it.

As I reached for my t-shirt, my son wandered to the door. "What are you doing, Mama?" he asked.

"I'm putting on my exercise clothes so I can go to work at the Y," I told him.

"You can't work, Mama. You're sick," he said.

'Huh,' I thought. 'He's right.' So I made a call bowing out and crawled back in bed, feeling only slightly ashamed of having been put in my place by a four-year-old.