We are eating dinner at one of our favorite Chinese buffet restaurants. I am sitting across the table from my son. He is shoveling stringy, yellowish noodles into his mouth and telling me the story about twins this, twins that - something he learned in Sunday school - I never did figure out who he was talking about. He said, "The one boys name was a short name."
I say "Abel?"
He says, "No," and goes on and on trying to remember the names of characters in this bible story and every name I offer (of the multitudes of bible names that I can recall - HA!) is wrong - and I offer a lot of names. Any name I can think of that sounds remotely bible-ish - like Ezra or Joseph or Emmanuel - all wrong. But, the moral of the story had to do with the one son stealing his brother's birth-right, being favored by his mother and ending up being King - or something.
He finishes up with this story (that I found very interesting, by the way) and then he says, "How much money do you have saved for me?" as he is now interested in his birth-rights (tee hee).
I say, "It's for college," and leave it at that.
He then says, "Well, I want to get a scholarship. That way I can use the money you saved for me for whatever I want."
I said, "That would be really great," and then I went on to explain that if that happened (a scholarship - *clasps hands and says a little prayer to God to please make it so*) the "left-over" money would not necessarily be his to spend however he wished (ACK!).
He then said, in between bites of his egg roll, "I really want my dream goal to come true."
To which I said, "Yeah, what is your dream goal?"
And he said, "To own as many exotic and rare cars as possible."
I laughed and said, "Like Jay Leno."
His face went blank.
Then he said, "But first I'll have to use all my college money to buy the mansion - I'll have to have the mansion to store all the cars in," and then he jumped up from his seat and ran off towards the buffet - to get more stringy, yellowish noodles.
My face went blank.
On the upside ... For the record - he really has NO BIRTH-RIGHTS and ... he is NOT using any money that we have spent years saving - to buy HIMSELF A MANSION!I'm just saying.