This is your Brain. This is your brain on six-year-olds.

Recently my kid got to have pop. For the first time. Like, ever. For those of you not stuck here in the midwest this could also be termed “soda” or “cola” or “a coke.” Whatever. We all know the proper term is “pop” and if you call it soda that’s just weird.

Anyhow, up until now, in his poor deprived six year old life the kid thinks that Gatorade is the BEST THING EVER and basically dessert.

Red plays with one of my old cell phones and tells me he’s doing his video games. I know. We don’t get out much. It’s almost kind of embarrassing, when he shows his friends his new fangled video game. They look at him with such pity and confusion.  But, you know? He has no clue. At this point he only thinks video games are things that Other People have at Their Houses. This is ok, but the other day he did tell me he was ready to move into his pastor’s basement and he would see me later.
They have a Wii. So, I get it.

Anyhow, the other day, my sweet son got to have a Pepsi.
We all know this is the gateway drink.
Before we know it, he’ll be cracking open the hard stuff. Mountain Dew.

The Night of the Pop, we had a baseball game which was about the fifty seventh of the season. We had baseball on every day of the week since like forever and maybe also some practices smushed in there too somewhere, I forget, because after a while I kind of gave up my will to live, and just packed fifty thousand snacks in the car along with two mitts and a baseball bat and just drove  around all summer.
But ANYHOW, the Pepsi thing happened after a late game, and also after this menu:

1.  Gatorade (almost crack)
2. 3 packages of those gummy fruit treats with REAL FRUIT in them (fruity crack)
3. Doritos (don’t judge. We all love them. Cheesy crack)
4. I think perhaps half of a cheese stick but I’m not sure. So, protein? Not crack?
5. Skittles (A mom gave him some. I dunno. I wasn’t able to intercept this shady deal that went down but evidently he seduced a mom at the ball park with his dashing good looks and she handed him a package. I do KNOW the mom so I am going to at least establish that my kid is not walking around taking candy from strangers. He did ask some strange man if he could try his dill pickle sunflower seeds, which he now LOVES, so baseball crack, I guess.)

And then, the can of Pepsi (the gateway crack)

And THEN, my kid lost his ever loving little tiny mind. All that sugar and caffeine headed straight for his oversized noggin, and his teeny tiny synapses started sparking out all over the place, and his brain tried, really, to connect the dots. I mean, it really tried. But instead? This is the conversation we had on the way home:

Red: DASHING THROUGH THE SNOW. INA ONE FORK OPEN SLEIGH! 
Mommy? MOM? mom? MOTHER? MOTHER? MOTHER? MOTHER?? MOMMMMMYYYYYYYYY?

Me. WHAT.

Red: What? What’d you want?

Me: Don’t worry dear. We’ll be home soon. Stay with me. Don’t go toward the light.

Red: I CAN SMELL COLORS!

Mommy? Do you know what I love? Do you? Do YOU? Do you KNOW??

Me: I want to start singing that Diana Ross song but it makes me weepy. You don’t really want weepy, do you?

Red: I WANT ALL THE THINGS NOW. AND WHEN I GET HOME? I’M GONNA PLAY WITH EM.

Also, Mom? I will now enter total monologue zone. Don’t speak, mommy. Just watch and learn.

Mommy, don’t think it would be really cool if we could hear out of our belly buttons?

Don’t answer that. It would be cool, though?
Also, I wanted to tell you how much I love my cat. I just really love him. We need to keep him forever. Even after he dies. You know? He can stay with us. I wish I had fur.

Kylo Ren, by the way? He could be my friend. But, he’s got to be a good guy first. We’ll see. Maybe. He killed his dad. That is NOT GOOD, I tell you.

I have the BIGGEST TAPE MEASURE EVER. IT CAN MEASURE ALL THE THINGS.

I AM SO HUNGRY. I SEE FRIES ON THE FLOOR I AM GONNA EAT THEM.
But now now, mommah, because I won’t unbuckle. I know that’s not safe.

Wait for me, fries.

Mommah, I WANNA GIVE YOU HUG! HUGGIEEEEEEE!

When we get home I’m going to draw a picture of Steve and you, mommy. You are both my favorite things.
And I think also pickles. For Halloween I’m gonna be a pickle. Because you can do that. On Halloween.

Not any other time though.

DID YOU SEE THAT? CHRISTMAS LIGHTS! CHRISTMAS LIGHTS! CHRISTMAS LIIIIIIGHTS!
(It was a liquor store sign. And no, I did not park the car and go IN to the liquor store. But by God, it did seem like a good idea for two seconds. Two seconds was all I got until:)

Do you know why I can’t hear out of my bellybutton, mommah?
Because I just pulled a bunch of grey stuff outta it. Here. Let me give it to you.
And then we got home. And I tucked my little sugarpnants into bed and listened to him sing Christmas carols to himself until about eleven thirty. It’s also possible he tried to play video games with some tinker toys. He named the cat Kylo Ren and tried to make him play. Video games. With tinker toys.

The cat won, by the way.

The husband and I just laid in bed, next door, holding hands, silently laughing so hard that the bed was shaking. And then, the husband just told me he’s gonna try the tape measure bit on me later. He says it sounds like a great come-on line.

This tells you that Red is not the only delusional one in our family.
But that’s another blog, for another day. Aren’t you glad?