Tough Questions

Me and Emily at my birthday party
Originally uploaded by Jules Verne.

My co-worker and friend, Teri, has a 7 year-old daughter whom I absolutely love—Emily. As you can see, she's adorable. But to be brutally honest, mostly I love her because she loves me so much. Lots of people have adorable kids, and if the kids don't respond well to my attempts to entertain them, then their novelty with me wears off pretty quickly. One of the very first times I spent more than 5 minutes with Emily, we entertained ourselves by dancing/jumping around her parents' living room (at my initiative) until we could barely catch our breath. My fate with her was sealed: she idolized me, and I ate it up. To this day, Emily continues to think I'm super cool, and I soak it in with pleasure, doing my best to keep up the illusion—at least until she's old enough to learn the truth about me.

Yesterday Emily came bounding into my office as she often does when Teri needs to pop back in to get something after already picking Emmy up from school. She gave me a fierce hug and proceeded to talk my ear off while she drew her signature puppy dog on my white board—using every dry erase marker I have (Coincidentally she was wearing a sassy little pink t-shirt that read "How can I listen when I can't stop talking?") While I love these visits, this time, I was actually kind of distracted with work needs. I did my best to multi-task: answering her never-ending barrage of questions, while continuing to pound away at my computer. I was doing pretty well until she asked, "What's a fax?" My mind raced away from what I was doing, trying to come up with a succinct, user-friendly, one-sentence answer fit for a second grader. When I couldn't come up with one in less than 3 seconds, I'm ashamed to say, I took the low road. "Uh, you should ask your mom that. She'll be able to tell you." Satisfied with this answer for the moment, she went back to her work of art. A second later I got an instant message from Teri who was upstairs: "Is she bugging you? I told her to just say hi and then come up." "Nah" I said, "But be warned that you're going to have to explain what a fax is." She laughed and said, "At least you didn't have to answer her question from last night. 'Can you make yourself pregnant - like all by yourself?'"

And that, my friends, is a tough question. And reason number #257 I'm thankful that I can still send the Emilys of my life scampering back to their parents. I'll be cool Miss Julie and their parents can tackle such quandrys on life and technology. Someday, though, I'm going to have to trust the Lord to give me the right words.