In today’s politically correct nomenclature, I call myself ‘Organizationally Challenged.’ In my world, a certain amount of clutter works. Steve, the anti-clutter, and others like him don’t understand.

I filed things based on what I was thinking that day. If I was working on product training for say, 800 Service, one of my products, I might file it under T for training or E for eight hundred or the number 8. Once a year, I would take a day to go through my files and I was always amazed at what I found where. This was my dirty little secret. I got so much done (due to my frenzied activity level) that most people assumed I had it together.

Early in my career, I had a boss who was very organized. Every day, before he left the office, he’d completely clear his desk, leaving only his phone and his calendar. He had a real problem with my style and was constantly after me to clear things off. I tried to explain that it was really better for everyone if I just left things out. But he insisted, it just wasn’t right.

One morning, I arrived at work to a note taped to my chair (or else I would never have found it) reading, “A disorganized desk is the sign of a disorganized mind.” I knew right away who left that homily. After my boss had packed up and cleared out that evening, I left him a note of my own. “If a disorganized desk is the sign of a disorganized mind, than an empty desk must be the sign of an empty mind. Which is worse?” As you can see, corporate politics were also not my strong suit.

My personal life was the same. When Steve and I first started living together, my lack of organization was the hardest adjustment for him. He looked in my refrigerator and couldn’t see any method to its arrangement due to the fact that there wasn’t any. Because he couldn’t live that way, he would take everything out and put the cheeses together and the yogurts together and all the beverages on the same shelf. He would patiently explain why putting this there made sense and I would see the beauty of his plan. He was right. I was able to glance in and see what we needed. I didn’t have to rummage through everything to find the jelly, preventing us from ending up with six strawberry jellies because I couldn’t find the five jars that were in there, somewhere.

But, reverting to type, I would put things back in a haphazard way and the refrigerator would return to its former state. I tried to explain to Steve that one of the laws of thermodynamics was entropy, which stated that everything in life eventually breaks down into disorder. In my best Star Trek Scotty Scottish brogue, I cried, “Captain, you can’t change the laws of physics!” Steve didn’t buy it.

My bill paying wasn’t any better. I left bills scattered about, and then I’d forget where.

One day, vowing to change my ways, I bought myself a small filing cabinet. I will create a place for everything, I promised, and put everything in its place. I started with a few files: bills to be paid, paid bills, bank statements. Things quickly got out of hand. In a hurry, I’d file my bank statements and bills unopened, intending to get to them later, but forgetting. I created new files for old subjects and ended up with unpaid bills under ‘U’ and, also, bills to be paid under ‘B.’ When I missed deadlines and received second notices for unpaid bills, I filed them under ‘S.’

When Steve got wind of my so-called system, he grabbed a stack of my unopened bank statements, waved them in front of me and, wide-eyed and disbelieving, screamed, “How do you live? HOW–DO–YOU - LIVE?”

Steve has taken over our finances ever since.

My best friend, Jackie, is even more organized than Steve. She has her cereal cabinet alphabetized. She has decorative boxes stacked in her laundry room, each labeled with its contents: mittens, mitten clips, swim goggles, shoe polish. Every time she starts a project she creates a binder with labeled sections for each component of the task. When she has a dinner party, she lays the serving dishes out the night before and places labels in each indicating their future contents.

Don’t get me wrong, I am in awe of her. I just hate it when we go there. Steve looks lovingly at her logical organization. Then, the two of them debate, for hours, the relative organizational merit of boxes over hooks over wire shelving.

I sometimes wonder if I am not unconsciously surrounding myself with this type of person to compensate for my deficiency. I also wonder why they keep me around.

I have, unfortunately, passed my personality trait on to my son, Martin. He is very clever, but he loses everything. His backpack is a disaster and he is constantly misplacing his homework. I angrily lecture him on responsibility, and then remember similar lectures aimed at me, and ease up on him.

We all have our challenges. I work on being more orderly and Steve continues to pick up the dropped pieces and put them in their place. He is the yang to my yin; my cosmic balancing half. He claims he wants me to change, but, really, what fun would that be?

I got to test this philosophy a few weeks ago when I went for my annual screening mammogram. Each year, since I turned forty, I’ve gone to my screening and have never had a problem. It was one of those things I checked off my to-do list, like teeth cleaning. I had my mammogram; they checked the films and said I could go. I never gave it another thought.

Until five days later I received a message from the clinic. “Please call scheduling for an ultrasound”. No explanation - nothing.

When I called back, the only information they had was that there was an irregularity and they needed to look further. I didn’t like the sound of the word irregularity. If there was ever a body part that I wanted to be considered regular, if not exceptional, it was my breasts. The earliest they could squeeze me in (no pun intended) was four days hence. They told me if I wanted more information I should call my internist who had a report.

When I immediately called my doctor, I was told he was with a patient and would call me later that afternoon. All afternoon I was in a panic. I tried to find a lump and couldn’t find anything, but I wasn’t even sure what I was looking for. Finally, my doctor called back and said, “Yes, they did see something but it is more than likely nothing at all. They are just being thorough”.

He agreed to see me that same day to see if he could feel anything, just to give me peace of mind until my ultrasound. I rearranged my afternoon and ran to the appointment. He too, could find nothing, and I was minimally reassured.

But I still couldn’t get rid of this niggling anxiety. I am especially cancer-phobic because my mother died of cancer years ago and watching her battle the disease left me with a deep fear of it. A voice inside my head kept whispering, “This is how a breast cancer nightmare begins”. I began to imagine that this might be the last “normal” week of my life. The last time I could go about my life without the specter of cancer hovering.

As I waited for the ultrasound appointment, I began to reconsider the concept of luck. Certainly, whether or not this irregularity turned out to be cancer would not be because of my wise choices or hard work. There was no behavior I could point to that made me more or less likely to get cancer. I had to admit that luck played a huge role after all. Denying luck as a force in my life was my security blanket. If I didn’t believe in uncontrollable forces than they couldn’t hurt me.

The day of my ultrasound arrived. On the way I crossed my fingers, knocked on wood, avoided stepping on cracks and prayed to anyone who might be listening. If there was good luck to be had, I wanted a piece of it.

The technician, who must have been trained to betray no emotion, took me into the room and began the procedure. Fifteen minutes later, it was determined that this irregularity was nothing but a benign cist. When I heard the news, I realized that I had assumed I would be getting bad news and almost didn’t believe it when they told me I was fine.

I drove home grateful for my life. This time, I was the lucky one. I was determined to enjoy every day and take nothing for granted.

I have learned that there are some things I can’t control and some things I can. I will continue to eat right and exercise and do whatever is in my power to keep my family healthy, happy and safe.

And then everything will be OK… with any luck.

I love summer and always look forward to it, but it’s those last few weeks when camps are over and the prevailing whine is, “I’m bored, I’m hungry or my brother is bothering me” (or all three at once, which I call the anxiety trifecta), that lets me know it is time for summer to end. I’m not alone in thinking this. I have been running into other mothers who greet each other with the cryptic phrase, “It’s almost time”. I can see the visions of solo coffee lattes dancing in their heads.

My kids are ready to go back to school, too. Forget New Year’s Eve, back to school time is the real time for starting fresh.

Remember the smell of new markers, the perfection of new, uniformly sharpened pencils, the feel of new school shoes and the crackle of newly opened composition notebooks? Add to that the hope that your mom will buy you the 64-pack of crayons (with built in sharpener) even though the supply list only asks for 24. Back to school is a delight to the senses and shopping for my kid’s school supplies always brings back that feeling. Ahhh, I love the smell of notebooks in the morning.

What I especially like about this time of year is that you get to start with a completely clean slate: new teachers, new classmates, and a new chance for success. For my kids this year, the slate doesn’t get any cleaner. They are both starting new schools (middle school and high school) and they will need to step out of their comfort zones. My daughter, who in the past often found herself on the social periphery, has announced to me that she plans to change her approach and be an outgoing girl. During her orientation day last Friday, she walked up to a group of girls and actually introduced herself. I am so proud of her.

But at the same time, I envy her opportunity to reinvent herself. I had forgotten how powerful this cycle of renewal was until I remembered how, in my first real job out of college, I felt robbed when I realized that what I did one year would follow me on to the next. And what happened to my summer vacation anyway? In the “real world” that I was so anxious to join there was no logical ending and beginning point. This was the start of my real permanent record.

But instead of succumbing the endless routine that is life, I have decided to take a cue from my kids and make this fall one of personal changes. I will reinvent myself. Try on some new personas. I just wish Angelina Jolie wasn’t already taken.

In any case, I will start by reveling in my newfound silence and contemplate some options. If you have any ideas, give me a buzz and we’ll discuss it over a quite cup of coffee.

But, lately, I started thinking. Everyone knows it’s bad for you, and there’s the expense. I added it up and figured I was spending about fifty dollars a month on this addictive habit. So I quit - cold turkey.

It was hard at first. I felt brittle, ready to crack at any moment. Sure there are products out there that help you through the transition, but I couldn’t figure out what to do with my hands. But within a few weeks I felt stronger, cleaner, and more myself. I thought I was done with it, but just yesterday I lost the battle and went back.

And they look fabulous.

In my defense, in what other area of your life are you able to achieve perfection with an investment of only 45 minutes and $25 every two weeks? Especially at my age, it seems like money and time well spent.

I’ll admit that I have always been a little bit obsessed with achieving perfection. Of course, because of my short stature (barely five feet tall) I could never approximate the world’s view of perfection. My husband, Steve, reinforced that conclusion about ten years ago when we were in Texas visiting his parents and we went to see the Alamo. Besides all the interesting war memorabilia, they had replicas of the clothes that were worn and the beds and furniture used in the 1800s. We couldn’t help notice that people seemed significantly smaller back then.

Steve observed, “A hundred years ago, you would have been the perfect woman.”

What do you say to that? “Uh, thanks. I guess timing really is everything?” Or, “As opposed to now when I’m a freak?”

Truthfully, a hundred years ago I would have been hideous. I have been coloring my hair for so many years that I wonder if some of the dye has seeped into my brain. Instead of gray matter I might now have brown matter, or even highlighted matter. Without the aid of hair color, laser eye surgery, personal trainers, braces, body lotion and my manicurist, I would be a gray haired, dry skinned, crooked toothed, myopic, flabby little old lady with bad nails. I am grateful to the technology of today that allows me to continue to approximate the younger me, albeit with an increasingly larger investment. As Steve likes to say, “You’re the best Janice money can buy.” At least, I’m the best one he can afford.

Throughout my 20s and 30s I had the optimistic view that if I just added one more workout, twenty more crunches and gave up chocolate for a while, essentially becoming a more disciplined version of myself, I could get there. At times I got close, but I was never completely satisfied. Ironically, now that I am in my forties I would be ecstatic to look like my non-perfect 30 year old self.

In my forties I am finally coming to the realization that while perfection is a noble enough goal, it is not something for which I am destined. At this point I look at my exercise efforts like walking up a down escalator. I have to keep marching forward in order to stay in the same place.

However, now that I am in mid-life, I am beginning to understand the Mid Life Crisis. I hear about people having extramarital affairs. While I don’t condone it, I somewhat understand why. We are getting older, and we sometimes need reassurance that we are still attractive.

But I could never have an affair. Not because it is morally wrong, which I believe it is, and not because I love my husband, which I do.

I could never have an affair because I simply can’t keep a secret. If something as exciting as an affair were ever in my life, I would be bubbling up with excitement and mentally storing all the moments for a later retelling. And who better to tell then the person closest to me, my husband.

About a year ago, I was working out in the health club and noticed a man kept looking at me. As I moved around from one piece of equipment to another I would occasionally look up and catch his eye. I didn’t give it much thought until I looked up again and saw him approach me. I was caught completely off guard when he asked me out to lunch after my workout. I was so unprepared. I hadn’t been asked out in more than fifteen years.

I froze. The only thing I could think to say was, “I don’t eat lunch.” Not, “I’m married.” or “I am not available.” but “I don’t eat lunch.”

He looked at me strangely, “Well, let me know if you ever do.”

As he walked away, I was a little embarrassed by how clumsily I handled it, but giddy about still being found attractive. After all, I live 90% of my life among women and children, the other 10% around dogs and repairmen, and have little opportunity to feed my ego.

As I left the health club, the first thing I did was call Steve at work. “Yes,” I told his secretary, “This was important.” She pulled him out of a meeting.

“Honey, guess what? Some guy at the health club asked me out on a date. Can you believe it? What did I say? I said I don’t eat lunch. I know, pretty lame. Well I just thought I’d keep you informed. See ya later.”

Steve knows I can’t keep anything in, so he knows he has nothing to worry about.

So, a loyal, if imperfect, wife I remain, except of course for my perfect nails. But that’s OK. My gift to myself for my forties is self-acceptance. Where the romantic words I am looking for are, “You may not be perfect, but you’re perfect for me.”

I was sitting at my son’s orthodontist appointment and I picked up an article which talked about this disorder in adults, and as I read it I realized they could have been describing the struggles I’ve felt my whole life. The way you diagnose yourself is to go down a list of behavioral traits and check off those that apply- disorganized, check; constantly losing things, check; inability to complete a task, check; interrupting conversations, check.

Disorganized I’ve pretty much covered in other stories, but losing things, that’s worth a short discussion.

Growing up and even today, I almost daily misplace my possessions: my keys, my purse, my earrings, my gloves, important slips of paper (including very important ones like bills and checks). I realize intellectually that they don’t get up and walk away, but on some level I’ve imbued my possessions with a life of their own. Things so regularly get lost and then miraculously reappear, that I’ve developed a fairly reliable philosophy of, “It will turn up”.

If I just trust my possessions to finish whatever little adventure they’ve taken themselves on, they invariably come home, often returning to the strangest places. My keys have shown up in the refrigerator, my earrings in the dryer. I’ve found gloves huddled in mismatched pairs next to stray checks behind the furniture, as if hiding during their attempted escape from the laundry room.

It’s easier for me to accept this mystical world than to admit I keep leaving things where they don’t belong. I always suspected I operated in a different world theatre but I’d pretty much gotten used to it.

Unfortunately, my problems are getting worse. At least I used to be scattered, but sharp.
As I get older my problems are compounded by the fact that I am also getting forgetful.

Now, more times than I can count, I’ll be in the laundry room starting laundry and the phone will ring. I’ll answer the phone, talk a few minutes and when I get off the phone, I’ll look around the kitchen, realize I need to do the dishes and get busy cleaning up. It might be an hour later when I’ll have some reason to walk back into the laundry room only to discover I’ve just completed a wash cycle with no clothes in the machine. To paraphrase the comedian Steven Wright, I feel I have de-ja-vu and amnesia at the same time- I keep having this feeling that I’ve forgotten this all before.

I’ll admit my behavior can be an inconvenience, but has it really risen to the level of a disorder? I don’t have any objection to promoting the greater understanding of human behavior, but I resent the fact that once someone labels a set of personality traits, they become a dysfunction.

And then once labeled, medical science devotes their resources to coming up with a medicine to make you “normal”.

Or maybe it’s the other way around.

Medical science stumbles on a cure for some personality quirk (most likely while in pursuit of another erectile dysfunction drug) and voila we have a newly labeled syndrome. Case in point; when I was growing up, you’d meet people who were shy. I was told, “Be nice to Melissa. She’s just a little shy”. Melissa may have seemed standoffish at first, but once I gave her some time, we became the closest of friends. Now however, shy people aren’t shy, they have Social Anxiety Disorder. And low and behold, we have just the medication that makes Melissa want to jump on a table and show us her version of the Macarena.

I think we need to leave these innocuous personality quirks alone and concentrate on some real social issues.

I have a neighbor who thinks that every time he sees me, it is the height of witty repartee to say, “Hey Janice, I see you’re still short”. My inner voice says, “And I see you’re still a jerk”, but being the nice person I am, I just chuckle, say “Good one” and get away fast.

If you ask me, I think this man suffers from Stupid Obnoxious Behavior syndrome, or SOB. The thousands of SOBs out there place a much greater burden on society than those of us who are shy or disorganized. Don’t you think it would be time better spent if researchers devoted their resources to developing an anti-jerk pill?

I can visualize the commercials for that breakthrough.

“Are you a complete asshole in public? Do you think it’s funny to make fun of people for their obvious physical flaws? Are you insensitive to the feelings of others? If so, it’s not your fault. You are suffering from SOB syndrome, and now we can help.”

It would be an added bonus if one of the side-effects of this miracle drug was shyness? Then maybe these people would keep to themselves. Or perhaps impotence? No sense in creating another generation of little SOBs.

But let’s not stop there. I also know people who seem to compulsively spend their time gossiping and worrying about their place in the social pecking order. In my opinion, they are suffering from Basically Insecure Truly Calculating Human syndrome, or BITCH.

I might even be willing to hold a fundraising telethon in pursuit of a cure for the millions of poor, miserable, suffering BITCHes - a quite literal bitch-a-thon.

“Are you, or do you know, a BITCH? Sadly, one out of every seven women suffers from this syndrome. This disorder affects millions and no one is immune. Anyone- your sister, your daughter, or your best friend may be suffering. And as you know, if someone in your family is a BITCH, everyone suffers.” The person that discovers a cure for this disorder would surely win a Nobel peace prize.

But once again, true to form, I digress; back to my ADD.

Even given the opportunity to medicate myself into clarity, I don’t think I will. There are a lot of positive things that come out of my so-called disorder. I believe that ADD people are highly creative.

Sure, while jumping from thought to thought I sometime lose that original thread. But often I grab onto an even more interesting thread and weave into a fascinating tapestry.

Most “normal” people, blessed with disciplined, linear thinking don’t have to deal with their mind wandering away. But at the same time, they don’t take the mental journey that allows for those sparks of creative thought.

Can anyone guarantee that if I medicated away my scatter-brained behavior, it wouldn’t take away my originality? I won’t take that chance.

This very story was brought to you courtesy of ADD.

It came to me as follows. The morning after I read that ADD article I took my dog for a walk in the dog park. I noticed one owner and dog playing fetch with a Frisbee and I noted to myself how my dog doesn’t possess that talent. My dog, Cosmo, might start running after the Frisbee but half-way there he’d see a bird, forget about the Frisbee, and start chasing the bird. That got me thinking that my dog must have doggy ADD, which allowed me to momentarily contemplate how dog and owner often have similar characteristics, which brought me back to my ADD, which allowed my mind to write this story in my head as I took a walk - an example of the perfect mind/body exercise. In case you’re wondering, I am that crazy lady chuckling to myself in the park.

Anyway, good, back or indifferent, I am at peace with my “condition”. My mind might wander and my possessions might escape, but in the greater scheme of things, I’d still rather be ADD than a BITCH-y SOB.

My battle with my hair influenced so many aspects of my life. I blame my hair for never properly learning to swim. There was NO WAY I was going to go into a pool after spending half the night before pulling, tugging and arranging my hair into some semblance of sleekness. Although I was academically competitive, I was willing to get a failing grade in gym rather than swim even once in a six-week unit (I don’t think they believed for a minute that I always had my period). How could they possibly expect me to dry my hair in the seven minutes we had to change before our next class? It was barbaric. So what if my grade point suffered. I had my priorities. I’m convinced it was partly my hair that kept me from valedictorian.

And forget about summers in Chicago, where I grew up. With humidity at a steady 99%, I knew what a bad hair day was. In high school I remember taking a weather course, and was amazed to learn that the hygrometer, the instrument which measures humidity in the air, uses a strand of hair between two wires. As the humidity rises, the hair expands and the instrument records the relative humidity. I knew it! My teacher swore it used an animal hair but I was privately convinced they used ethnic Jewish hair. People thought I was crazy when I insisted I could feel my hair expanding, but I was right.

When I had my first child and was still working I had no time to fuss over my hair, I did what I had to do. I cut my hair short. The things you do for your children. I’d blow dry my short layered cut and hairspray it within an inch of its life to attempt to preserve my do against the elements. I’d have it so lacquered that no hair on my head would move an inch, even as I walked down the streets of the windy city. Steve affectionately called this my helmet hair, but he didn’t understand what I was up against.

When we moved to Denver I experienced the most pleasant surprise. Sure the mountains were lovely, the skies blue, the mosquitoes scarce and the winters mild. The real thrill was what the low humidity did for my hair. For the first time in my life, every day was a good hair day. Heck, if I was doing PR for this town, you better believe that would be the first thing I’d list on the brochures. I decided for the first time in years, I was going to grow my hair long.

Remember the movie classic Lost Horizon, where the leading man stumbled into the enchanted paradise of Shangri-la. In Shangri-la, time stood still and you never aged. But if you ever left Shangri-la, as the young woman did for her beloved in the movie, you would age a hundred years.

In terms of my hair, I wasn’t going to make the same mistake. I would just have to never leave Denver. I would call my friends in Chicago and tell them, “You would not believe how great my hair looks but the only problem is I can’t come show you. I only look good in Denver – my personal hair Shangri-la”.

But as my hair grew longer, so did my expectations. I didn’t just want manageable hair; I wanted swingy, shiny, straight hair. So I spent close to an hour every day first blow- drying my hair, then flat ironing it section by section and then taking a curling iron to the ends to add that casual flip to provide the illusion that it all happened naturally. It was ridiculously time consuming but I loved the result.

But all those tools started to take a toll on my hair – it started to dry out and the ends began to break off. I still did not want to give up, but then something happened; two of my curly haired friends intervened- literally. They cornered me at lunch one day and had a hair intervention. They told me I should just let my hair go curly. That it would look more natural and less contrived. I said, “You don’t understand. My hair is a nightmare. It doesn’t curl really. It just kind of puffs”. The truth was, I didn’t know what my hair would do. I hadn’t let my hair dry naturally ever. I’m not exactly a low maintenance gal. But the truth was I was tired of planning my days around my hair. Just how much more productive would I be, I wondered, if I could just wash and go?

I made an appointment with my friend’s stylist. My friends came with me and explained my situation to her like I was developmentally disabled. The stylist wet my hair and looked at it carefully. The three of them kept picking up strands, scrunching them and then they’d examine them carefully. I felt like a groomed chimpanzee.

After much discussion, my hair was deemed curl-worthy and the chopping began. She cut about a thousand layers into my hair as I tried not to panic. Thirty minutes later, I looked at the finished result. My hair was softly curling around my head and it was actually kind of cute.

Since that day I have gone curly and never looked back. I am a woman transformed. No more blow dryer, no more flat iron, no more styling – I’m a wash and go gal. It’s not so much a hair style for me as a life style. I’m getting so natural that I’m almost ready to be on survivor – except for my manicured nails and the fact that I hate camping.

The moral to the story? Don’t be afraid to be yourself? Try to embrace your uniqueness? Stop focusing on superficial things? Maybe, but what I really learned is this: there is no substitute for a good stylist- and good friends.

For those few of you who are still not familiar with Sudoku, it is a number puzzle with 9, 3x3 boxes. Putting in the correct numbers, 1 through 9, in each box, and then having only one of each number in each vertical and horizontal row solves the puzzle. I am not positive but I believe Sudoku is the Japanese word for, “Another way to waste time when you should really be doing something productive”. I really admire the Japanese economy with words.

I knew about Sudoku but managed to avoid it for months. I am a word person, so my puzzle of choice is the crossword puzzle. It’s true. I have an uncanny memory for obscure words and irrelevant trivia, a skill that has no real world application other than crossword puzzles. So I’m sort of a crossword puzzle snob. I once got an eleven-letter word meaning luck (serendipity) and felt intellectually superior all day.

But my eleven-year old daughter loves Sudoku and several of my friends carry around their little Sudoku notebooks. I’d see everyone at the pool doing it. People hanging around their kid’s sporting events do it. Sudoku is everywhere. It’s insidious (a nine letter word meaning spreading in a stealthy but dangerous manner), and truth be told, I was starting to feel left out.

One day, when I was supposed to be writing and couldn’t think of anything to say, I asked my daughter how Sudoku worked. She was delighted. Not only to did she quickly explain the basic rules, she filled me in on her strategies. Talk to anyone who does Sudoku and they will gladly share their personal strategy, which is clearly superior to anyone else’s strategy. I tried it and it turned out to be kind of fun. Because Sudoku is all numbers, I guess I assumed it involved addition, subtraction or multiplication – one of the higher functions. But it only involves the ability to count to 9, and that I can master. Then I found electronic Sodoku on my computer and it’s even better than playing on paper. If you play electronically, you can use this function that will tell you if you are making a mistake- not that I use it, of course. That would be cheating. I’m still a beginner, but I’m finding that even at that level, I am able to waste significant blocks of time solving the puzzles.

But maybe I’m not wasting time at all. I recently read that doing mental exercises like Sudoku keeps the middle age mind sharp and can keep dementia at bay. Maybe completing a Suduko puzzle is like doing 50 mental push-ups- without all the inconvenient sweat and exertion. If I can keep my remaining brain cells functioning, I’m willing to try anything, even working with numbers.

And after just a few weeks with Sudoku I feel sharper already. Here’ my proof. Without Sudoku I would never have been able to write this column.

However, I met a very accomplished woman the other day and all she had to do was pose one question to have me doubting the very worth of my life.

After initial introductions, she opened with, "So, are you into horses?"

I don't know why I did this but I launched into a lengthy, defensive and vague, "Well I like horses. I think they're pretty. I mean, I respect them as animals and of course, I recognize their contribution to the history of the American West. But, actually I don't know much about them".

"So, in other words, No" she replied.

Already weakened by my lame opening, she then delivered the knock-out punch to my withering self-confidence by asking, "So then, what is your passion". As if the only possible reason I wasn't into horses was that my passion was directed in another equally single-minded and rewarding direction.

In my head I reviewed a list of possible responses to that question that went something like, "Well I read a lot, and of course I have kids which require a lot of my energy what with all the feeding and clothing and driving I do, and then there are my dogs, and of course I try to eat right and exercise, and I care a lot about the environment, and I write a little and I also do a lot of laundry, and then there is the time it takes to do my hair and nails…"

Outwardly I think I just stared at her for a long ten seconds, while I possibly said something like, "Well, um, well, you know…things. I keep busy".

“Uh huh”, she replied. Which obviously really meant, “What a loser. You are beneath my even responding with a real word”.

She quickly moved on to someone more deserving of her attention and I was left thinking I'd failed the interview for the job of self-respecting woman. Her question brought me back to college where everyone's introductory question was, "What is your major?" At the time I had a major as well as a minor and I could confidently state that I was majoring in Marketing and minoring in Psych and knew exactly where I was going in life. Back then it seemed so simple. Then life happened and the next thing I knew I was a mother of two living in the suburbs.

So what happened to my passion in the intervening twenty years? (Perhaps I put it down somewhere while breast-feeding and forgot where I put it). Surely even contemplating one's passion is the luxury of the modern day middle or upper class. Prior to this time in history and still for those of less fortunate circumstances, the answer to the question, "What is your passion?" would be "Survival". But I was one of those lucky educated ones, and I remember (vaguely) planning to “have it all”.

The next day I took a mental inventory of my life since college. I spent my twenties building a career and enjoying being young. I had plenty of passion back then, as is appropriate for any self-centered twenty-something. My thirties were spent building a family, dialing down my career and trying to get enough sleep. Even then I was not without passion. In fact, I would have to say that it was during that period of my life when my kids were very young that I developed my life long passion for wanting to be left alone for five minutes.

Now I am in my forties with my somewhat self-sufficient family and I finally have the time to revisit the question, "What is your passion" and unfortunately I don't have an answer that roles easily off the tongue.

There are so many options to consider. It's probably too late to become a ballerina, a gymnast or a doctor, but I could still become a gourmet cook, a gardener, a yoga instructor, a fitness buff, a wine connoisseur, a tennis player, an art enthusiast or an entrepreneur. But as a mother, I still don't have a lot of time. Can it still be a passion if you dabble a little here and a little there?

And then an answer hit me and I wished I could have rewound the tape to the moment she asked me, “What is your passion?”

I would proclaim, “I am a student of the human condition, in so far as the human under consideration is an educated, Jewish, suburban mother of two in her forties. And as this is a longitudinal study, my conclusions won't be published for many years to come”.

At least then I wouldn't have been the one with the dumbfounded expression.

Just like nature abhors a vacuum, Steve abhors unscheduled time. He felt compelled to fill this scheduling vacuum with a productive activity, in this case “A Summer Cleaning”.

The spark that ignited it all was that Steve opened up our laundry room cabinet looking for something and demanded “Why do we still have these old towels?” My answer was simple. Every time a towel would get faded, ripped, or stained, or I’d simply changed color schemes, I’d put these towels in a cabinet to be used as rags. It was what my Mom did and it seemed a more dignified passing for once beloved towels than the trash. At least they would still have a useful life. But after sixteen years of marriage, we had accumulated fifty or more rag towels and they were spilling out haphazard and in disarray.

“Time to let go”, he declared, and so the frenzy began.

One disorganized cabinet opened up the Pandora’s Box of our four day cleaning and organizing frenzy. You probably remember the legend of Pandora. When Pandora opened up the box, she let out Sadness, Greed, Corruption, Sloth and more, unleashing all manner of sins and tragedy upon mankind.

Well if Steve were the one opening Pandora’s Box, the tragedy would have been averted. As soon as the vices would start flying out, Steve would grab them, sort them and dispose of them appropriately.

“OK. Here’s Greed - I haven’t used that since the Internet 90’s, so we’ll put that in the Goodwill pile. Waste - Not since the kids were born but I’m sure plenty others have time to waste so that goes to recycle, Sloth- Not since my college days so that goes to trash”. If you give Greed to charity, recycle Waste and clean out Sloth, don’t they cancel each other out, kind of like matter and anti-matter? We’d have to consider saving Hedonism and Laziness for our kids for when they go to college but I’m certain they would want the latest versions anyway, so out they’d go. I would have to insist on saving Vanity and Narcissism because obviously I am still using them.

I started out helping with the clean up. I’m a good sport. I figured two people would get it done faster than one. But my efforts would be interrupted with, “No, no, don’t save that”. So I started just throwing everything out. That was interrupted by, “No, no, I need that”. Clearly he was following rules to which I was not privy, so I bowed out.

The kids and I learned very quickly to just stay out of his way. As he rummaged through cabinets, he’d pull out an offending item and inquire, “Whose is this?” At first we thought the right answer was, “It’s mine”. But that brought, “Well this doesn’t belong here. Please put it in your room, in the basement, in your closet, (insert some other inconvenient destination)”.

Pretty soon we’d all be weighed under with a pile of jacks, playing cards, old notebooks, bobble headed monkey pens and books with no idea where to put them. Obviously that is how they ended up where they were. So the safer answer became, “I have never seen that monkey pen in my life”, which doomed it to a fate in the waste pile.

The kids and I all just hovered a respectable distance away, just outside of the Steve’s organizational force field, making mental calculations on whether the trip upstairs or downstairs to put something away way was worth saving it from the trash heap. “No” to the old jacks, “No” to the notebook, “No” to the McDonald’s toy but for the love of God, don’t throw out my Monkey pen.

We moved from the laundry room, to the kitchen, through the family room and finally into the garage. The garage was such a profound disaster that it was there we decided we needed professional help.

I remembered that there was a woman in my neighborhood that started an organizing business. I gave her a call and she came right over and she and Steve became engaged in a discussion of what to save, what to give away and what to throw away which led us to filling our two cars with items we took to Goodwill and a mountain of trash for the curb.

With the first “Getting rid of” phase complete, we plan to continue to the organizing phase. This will probably take place during Steve’s next unscheduled weekend, perhaps our anniversary.

So there went my birthday weekend. My present from Steve- a more organized home. “Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you, our house needed an overhaul; I know just what to do!”

Before I had kids, I would see parents screaming at theirs in public as the kids melted down, and I’d scoff with superiority. I would never do such a thing. My children would know their limits, and if they didn’t, I would calmly explain the consequences and they would intelligently make the right choices.

Making this vow is easy to do before you are presented with the reality of parenthood. If I stop and think about it, I’m sure I could catalogue all the unique ways I am messing up, and messing my kids up as a result. Although hundreds, if not thousands, of parenting mistakes come to mind, there are a few in particular that convince me that along with their college fund, I’d better start a long-term therapy fund as well.

My early mistakes with Martin centered on attempts to subdue his physical energy. Left in a room to play, he would literally bounce off walls while he moved from one activity to another. No drawer would be left unopened. No toy untouched. I told Steve we might be wise to pad the walls. If nothing else, it would cut down on the abuse of our walls.

The problem was I couldn’t always keep him inside. Sometimes, I needed to take him out into the world. When Martin was two years old, I took him to the mall in a stroller. Martin was never one to stay quietly put. As soon as I turned my back (to look at some clothes on sale), Martin tipped out of the stroller, ran out of the store, and sprinted down the mall commons. As soon as I noticed (it took awhile, we were talking 50% off!), I dashed after him. About 100 yards down, screaming like a lunatic the whole way; I leaped in the air and executed a tackle the NFL would have been impressed to see. I threw him over my shoulder and marched back to the store as he screamed and struggled the whole way. I couldn’t decide whether to explain to shocked onlookers that he was really mine, (I didn’t want them to think I was kidnapping the kid), or deny any knowledge of this wild creature altogether.

And this kind of thing happened all the time. When Martin was three, I took him with me to an outdoor garden center. One second he was walking next to me. The next second he was gone. I immediately panicked and started running down the rows of plants screaming his name. As I surveyed the wide landscape I spotted him running out of the garden section and full tilt into the busy parking lot.

When I finally caught up with him, I was in such a state of panic that I grabbed him by the arm, pointed a finger close to his face and yelled. “Don’t you ever, ever, ever, ever, EVER, run away from me. Do you hear me? Never, ever, ever, EVER, run into a parking lot. EVER!”

During my entire tirade I kept waving my finger at him in sharp motions to emphasize the ‘never evers’. I ended with, “What did I just say?” I was hoping to reinforce my important point by making him repeat it. He stared at me earnestly, then wagged his little forefinger severely in my face and said, "You said, don’t you ever, ever, ever, ever, EVER… I forgot the rest.”

I’m glad that got my point across.

And while Martin was my active child, dealing with his sudden escapes turned out to be easy compared to his sister’s public meltdowns. These public tantrums were regular performances in Kelsey’s behavioral repertoire.

When Kelsey was two, we flew to Houston to visit Steve’s family. Scheduled to return on a 4:00 PM flight, we really wanted Kelsey to nap all the way home. We knew that if she fell asleep for even 20 minutes before take-off, she would assume that was her nap, and she’d be awake and cranky the entire flight. Her naptime was usually around 2:00pm, so we kept her going all afternoon.

The real challenge was the drive to the airport, where she kept nodding off in her car seat. In order to keep her awake, I sat next to her in the back and kept blowing in her face and tickling her, which annoyed her greatly, but kept her awake.

By the time we got on the airplane, she was delirious. As we reached our seats, she started screaming that her diaper hurt. As I tried to calm her down, she stood up in her seat and started to strip. Off came her shoes, her socks, her pants, her diaper, and her shirt. As I tried to redress her, she screamed louder and got more naked. I fully expected, and our fellow passengers fervently prayed, that we were going to get kicked off the flight. I would struggle with her to put back on her diaper and then she would rip it off. I would force her shirt back over her head and she would scream, tear if off and throw it across the aisle (she has a great arm). We managed to half dress her and in the process we became untucked and disheveled as well. I can’t imagine what we must have looked like to other people. We didn’t appear to be in control of the situation, mainly because we weren’t.

Eventually, we managed to contain her somewhat, but for the duration of the flight, she screamed, struggled and acted like a maniac child. It wasn’t until we started descending that she fell into a deep and quiet sleep.

As she got older, Kelsey found new ways to push my buttons. I can proudly say now that I handled many of them...oh, who am I kidding? I managed to mishandle any number of situations.

When Kelsey was four, she developed the annoying habit of needing my attention any time I would pick up the telephone. I would try to carry on a conversation, to an ongoing background barrage of “mom, mom, moms,” until I would loose my patience altogether.

So, of course, I made a rule. “When mommy is on the phone, you don’t interrupt unless you or someone else is bleeding, or is otherwise in need of immediate medical attention.” It didn’t seem to sink in. In one case, though, I was glad she didn’t follow my rule.

That day it was my turn to drive Kelsey and her four-year old friend, Matthew to 10:00am gymnastics. Matthew’s mother had a 9:00 am appointment so she dropped Matthew off at our house to play before gymnastics. When Matthew arrived, I sent him to the basement, where Kelsey was watching Big Comfy Couch, a PBS program, on our new 70” big screen TV.

This cinematic extravagance came equipped with a universal remote, a term that seemed very ‘Star Trek’ to me, like ‘Universal Translator’ and we were just beginning to figure it out. In conjunction with the new digital cable, I had only learned the very basic functions.

I probably don’t have to tell you this, but we had purchased this huge television at the insistence of my husband. As you walked down the ten steps to the basement, it sat in full view of anyone walking down.

They were watching Comfy Couch, so I started to clean the kitchen and the phone rang. While I was talking to my sister about nothing I can recall, Kelsey came running up the stairs, trailed by Matthew, whining, “Mom! Mom! There is a lady on TV and she’s dying.”

“I’m on the phone,” I mouthed, and gave a very stern looked designed to get my point across. I planned to ignore her to teach her not to interrupt, but something caught my attention. Why would someone by dying on Comfy Couch? That seemed decidedly un-Comfy Couch-like.

I told my sister I’d call her back and started down the stairs to investigate. As I approached step five, with the kids close behind, I noticed that what was on this life-size screen was not Comfy Couch at all. There, in 70” graphic detail, a naked man and woman were engaged in an activity that, had the kids stayed down another minute, would have clearly revealed that she was not dying. Shocked, I dove for the remote, tackled it, and quickly hit the Power button, shutting it off.

“Hey, we were watching,” whined Kelsey.

“It’s broken.” I breathlessly muttered, and ushered them off to a coloring project.

What I believe had happened was that Matthew did not like Comfy Couch and was not shy about playing with the Universal Remote. Unbeknownst to us, we had the Spice channel on our digital cable, and he located it before we even knew we had it. (That’s my story and I’m sticking to it). We’ve locked those channels since.

I kept waiting for the kids to say something about the program but they never did. After gymnastics when I drove Matthew home, I pulled his mother aside and said I had to tell her something.

“The thing is,” I began, “I accidentally exposed Matthew to pornography this morning”; a pronouncement she was probably not expecting. I was certain to be cut out of the carpool. Thankfully, she found the story amusing and told me she’d let me know if he ever mentioned the incident. Surprisingly, neither of them ever did. No doubt, it will be one of those repressed memories that come out after extensive therapy. “When I was four I witnessed life-size pornography, and that must be why I have an unexplained attraction-repulsion to electronics.”

Life goes on, and I look forward to the numerous and interesting ways I will mess up in my parenting in the future. Now that the kids are older, I move from safeguarding their physical self to the much harder and less clear task of safeguarding their emotional development. I hope I start doing a better job soon or someday they will be hearing, “Sit back on my big comfy couch and tell me all about it.”

Also, being an immediate gratification girl, I love the idea that while a natural diamond takes millions of years to occur, a LifeGem diamond takes only eighteen weeks. I’m sure this doesn’t sit well with the big diamond conglomerates.

My favorite of these is the DeBeers “A diamond is forever” people. Women swoon and men get nauseated at the sight of their commercials. Especially polarizing is the ten-year diamond anniversary commercial where the handsome graying-just-a little-eyes-with-laugh-lines husband stares lovingly in his aging-gracefully-still-beautiful wife’s eyes and pledges he’d marry her all over again. Not only that, he presents her with a diamond necklace to prove that talk is cheap, but he isn’t.

My husband, Steve, feels he speaks for most men when he voices his disgust. “Look at the manufactured pressure this puts on men. It makes women think that if they don’t get this expensive necklace on their anniversary, then their husbands don’t love them and wouldn’t “marry them all over again”. Fine, be that way.

Now I have my solution. I told my husband that if he dies before me, I’m turning him into a diamond. He seemed pleased with the idea, especially if it gets him out of buying one during this lifetime. And it seems appropriate on so many other levels.

Since he is 6’4”, a whole lot of carbon atoms, it seems certain to be my only chance of getting my three carats. I don’t care what anyone says, size does matter. For another thing, my tall, handsome husband has always made a great accessory. This just allows him to continue in that role. Thirdly, even after he goes, for the rest of my life, I’ve got him where I want him. I can talk as much as I want, about whatever I want – even my feelings, and he can’t leave the room. And lastly, what could be a better example of turning lemons into lemonade? On one hand, you have lost your lover, your soulmate, and your best friend. But on the plus side, you are left with fabulous jewelry. Not an even exchange, but something.

And I want to be a diamond, too. My concern is that being short (barely five feet tall), I hope there is enough of me to make a diamond for each of my kids. I don’t want them fighting over me.

I can even pick the cut. In keeping with my reputation, I guess I’d choose a Princess Cut, but I’d have to think it through. Princess cuts are a little square. Do you think it would make me look fat?

I also discovered that the color, from a light yellow to amber, will vary based on the impurities in your ashes. But what would cause you to have impurities? Would your color after the fact give away a life of impure thoughts and deeds ala, “He came out amber. I knew he was cheating on me!” Or perhaps you really are what you eat and the color will be determined by your diet. “He always loved beer. How fitting that he would come out a golden pale ale”.

When I mentioned my plans to my kids, they were repulsed by the idea. But being a former marketing person, I tried to spin the concept positively. I told my son that if I die before he gets married, he could present his beloved with a diamond engagement ring ala mom.

“Darling, this is for you. Will you marry me?”
“Oh honey. It’s beautiful. Did this belong to your Mom?”
“Well, sort of, um, actually, it is my mom.”

If she doesn’t run screaming it was meant to be. Sure it’s odd and a little bit creepy, but whose in-laws aren’t?

Still, the kids seem still resistant to the idea. Maybe it’s not fair to make my kids wear me long after I am supposed to be gone. The quest for immortality is ever elusive. So I decided I will create immortality the old fashioned way. I’ll haunt them.

So she narrowed her quest to another dog. She said, "Wouldn't it be so cute to get a puppy like Cosmo. We never got to see Cosmo as a puppy". To humor her, I went on-line and looked up Brittany breeders in the area and found an available litter of puppies. Word of caution- don't ever do this unless a puppy is definitely in your future, because there is nothing cuter than these little pups. They should come with warning labels.

I thought my safety net would be my husband, Steve, who I assumed would never agree to another dog. But he didn't immediately say "No", which to Kelsey translated as an enthusiastic "Yes". After a little more begging, the next thing I knew we were putting down a deposit on a female Brittany puppy, who we decided to name Sophie. The only dissenting member of our family was my son, Marty, who sensibly pointed out the additional work that would go in to getting a second dog. It is a scary day in our family when my teenager acts as the voice of reason. If nothing else, that should have tipped us off to the folly of our plan. The other dissenter, it turned out, was our existing pet, Cosmo.

We justified that Cosmo could use some dog company- someone to talk to. But no one consulted him and based on his ongoing relationship to Sophie, I believe his feedback would have been "Don't do me any favors". From the day she arrived, she has been making Cosmo's life a misery. At seven and half weeks old, Sophie was eight pounds of orange and white love, but Cosmo wanted nothing to do with her. When she showed up, he sniffed her and walked away. I think he was hoping she was just here for a visit but not only did she stay, she took over. On the other hand, Sophie loves Cosmo and exhibits it with a frightening intensity.

Cosmo has a gentle, laid-back and even lazy temperament. If he were a human, I'd describe him as the aging athlete that just wants his sports, a burger and permission to lie around all day. If only he had thumbs, he'd be popping beer cans and working the remote control. Those qualities are very endearing – in a dog.

Sophie, as it turns out, is anything but laid-back. She's energetic, playful and completely in charge. Cosmo will just be settling down for his mid-morning nap and she'll bounce over and bite him in the face, jump on him and bark at him until he gets off his doggy butt. We imagine she's scolding him, "Get up already. You slept 20 hours yesterday. Let's go do something. Let's dig some holes, catch some birds or play with my rubber chicken. Why do I have to do all the work?"

Sometimes, when she's hanging off of his ears and biting his eyes, I could swear he mumbles, "Bitch" under his breath as he ambles by, although whether it's merely an observation and not an assessment of her character, I don't know. But I believe he secretly loves her. She is so adorable and really sweet in a manic, bossy, "I have to be the center of attention" kind of way.

And for reasons I don't quite understand, I can really relate to that.

As a stay at home mom, I am the parent who is intimately involved with all of their school obligations. I am the nag-in-chief when it comes to making sure their homework and long term projects are completed on time.

My role differs with each child. With my daughter, I strive to limit the emotional meltdowns each day. My little girl can be a little high strung. On the one hand, I really admire the high standards she sets for herself. She is a very hard worker and quite the perfectionist. On the other, much more neurotic hand, she is unable to tolerate anything going wrong.

“Now-all-my-work-is-wasted-maybe-I-dreamed-the-whole-thing-and-I-never-even-worked-on-it!”

So of course, I laughed. Sometimes these hysterical rants can be pretty creative. Somehow, whenever something goes wrong, she is able to find a reason, no matter how obscure, to make this disaster my fault. If she did badly on a quiz, it was clearly because I forgot to do her laundry so she had to wear something really dumb, so she was really distracted because David was looking at her and probably thinking she looked like a dork, so she couldn't concentrate on the answers and she would have gotten an A if I had just done her laundry the night before. Huh? I guess she's got me. I wanted to point out that if spent half as much time studying and keeping track of her work as she does finding creative reasons why it is all my fault, she'd be running the show. But my pre-teen is not a fan of irony, so I kept this observation to myself.

Instead I remembered something from a parenting book I once read, so I said, “OK, that’s One. If I get to Three, you lose television tonight. Calm down and we will look for it”.

“But-I-need-it-today-and-it-isn’t-where-I-left-it-so-you-probably-put-it-somewhere-and-now-you-can't-remember-cause-you're-getting-old". She's getting good- she shifted the blame and reminded me of my advancing years in one run-on sentence.

“OK, that’s Two.”

“And-now-I’m-going-to-be-late-for-school-too"!

So I marched upstairs. Opened her nightstand and promptly found the papers she was looking for right on top.

"The papers are right here. That is Three. You just lost television for the day.” I was actually panting from the nervous frustration of an emotional aerobic workout.

“Oh sorry, mom”, she said, instantly calmed, taking the papers and stuffing them into her backpack. And here’s the beauty part. She became completely and instantly unruffled while I was now wound up and tense. How she accomplishes this transfer of anxiety I’ll never know. But it works every time. As she cheerfully left for school, I spent the next three hours wrestling with a facial tic.

All of her teachers and other parents never see this side of her. To the outside world she is the sweetest and most charming kid around.

My son is another story altogether. At fourteen he should not need my micromanaging; however he is so laid back and unconcerned that I feel I must fill in the worry gap. He will “forget” to study for tests, do homework assignments, or about long term projects until 24 hours before they are due. Yes, I know conventional wisdom says I should let him fail. But I have such a hard time doing that.

I tell him if he keeps up this slacker attitude he will only have to learn one thing, which is how to say, “Would you like fries with that?”

I realize that parenting by sarcasm is not really helping and I do actually offer helpful suggestions. Last month he was faced with three long term projects all due within the same week. So I thought I would help him learn how to break down something large and daunting into small digestible chunks. We sat down together and broke each of these projects down and I created a timeline detailing what needed to be tackled each week.

But my son is the king of procrastination. Before he settles down to work, he will decide he needs to eat. But it is never a quick snack. He’ll decide to make a fruit salad, meticulously cutting each piece of fruit in equal sized bites. Then he’ll decide to make soup. The only time he’s willing and able to feed himself is when the alternative is school work. Then he’ll say he has to take a bath, or he becomes suddenly willing to help his sister out with something. Whenever he starts to go out of his way to be nice to her or is suddenly concerned about his hygiene, I know he is avoiding homework.

So yesterday, after several hours of procrastination-related activities, he finally buckled down to work on a book report. He spent three hours at this computer. When I went up to check on his progress I realized he spent the first hour trying to locate family tree software on the Internet so he could more easily dissect the character relationships. After that unsuccessful search, he proceeded to list every characters lineage and their interrelationship with every other character, yielding an incomprehensible and convoluted introduction.

So I freaked.

“What a waste of time! Next time I am building into your timeline one hour for trying to download unnecessary and nonexistent software followed by two hours of mind numbing exploration of character quirks and non essential subplots!” I know. I was back to the parenting by sarcasm thing.

He actually accused me of mocking him. At this point, my husband got involved. He pulled me away and scolded me for being so harsh and saying that I was clearly taking it all too personally. Of course I was, but can you blame me. After all my hard work, he was going to blow my A.

If only I could combine my daughter’s perfectionism with my son’s calm, we’d have the perfect student. Of course, more likely we’d get a combination of my daughter’s emotional high maintenance plus my son’s disorganized procrastination and we’d have, well, me. And we don’t want more than one of those.

So next year, I pledge to try a different approach. I will let my daughter’s tantrums wash over me, absorbing the shock waves until they dissipate into calm. With my son, I will let him approach his work in whatever circuitous, fruit salad making pace he is comfortable, and just stay out of his way. That is my solemn vow – until the fall.

We tried everything to calm him. We tried placing his car seat on our clothes dryer because the vibration and warmth was supposed to be relaxing. It didn’t calm him down and it started to melt the plastic car seat. We tried running the vacuum because the white noise was supposed to be soothing. My carpets stayed clean but the vacuum gave me a headache.

When we lacked the strength to walk him around, we discovered that taking him for a drive would put him to sleep. Many times, on the edge of exhaustion, we’d pull out of the garage and drive him around the neighborhood. As long as the car kept moving, he was fine. We dreaded a red light because the minute we stopped, he would start wailing again. We imagined explaining to an officer the need to go through any number of red lights to avoid a crying baby. A jury of our peers (sleep-deprived new parents, that is) would never convict us.

We tried new formulas every week, hoping to find one that kept him happy. We did iron-enriched. We did iron-free. We did soy. Nothing helped.

When Marty was about one month old, I showed up at the pediatrician’s office completely exhausted, unwashed, unbrushed, and totally disheveled. I was practically crying as I explained about Marty’s colic and how I just didn’t know what to do. The doctor took one look at me and, with no apparent thought to his physical safety, suggested, “Just looking at what a nervous wreck you are makes me wonder if you aren’t communicating your anxiety to your baby.”

“Are you suggesting I am making him colicky?” I shrieked a few octaves above normal.

“Well, some studies suggest…” he started to explain.

“Studies suggest, studies suggest!” I sputtered. I was furious. How dare he! I packed up, left the office, and found myself another pediatrician.

I found a more sympathetic doctor, but we still had to deal with Marty’s ongoing colic and smelly gas.

At last, at about 12 weeks old the colic finally let up. I don’t know if this was due to the new formula my new pediatrician suggested or just Marty’s maturing, but we were so relieved. However while the end to his colic was a blessing, it was replaced by projectile vomiting. Our doctor assured us that this was normal and, that by the time he was walking, it would cease. Easy for him to say, as Marty’s first spit-up-free steps would be months away. Things really got interesting when we started baby food, because Marty would spew in Technicolor.

You couldn’t even anticipate when he would let go because it didn’t necessarily happen right after meals. He would be sitting and playing with you, and suddenly, with a smile on his face, he would send a stream of blueberry spit-up three feet across the room. We even thought about having him exorcised but we couldn’t find a rabbi willing to do it.

When Marty was about four months old, Steve and I went shopping for one of those metal frame baby backpacks so we could carry him around hands-free. Steve tried one on in the store and liked the fit. Just before we bought it we placed Marty in the back to see if he liked it, and he promptly spit up on Steve’s head. We decided not to get one. We would never feel safe.

So Steve and I got in the habit of wearing oversized T-shirts over our clothes whenever we were at home. Our babysitters and friends all knew the drill. We had stacks of these T-shirts by the door, and when anyone came over they would don the costume. With the protective attire and our friend’s reluctance to handle him, you would have thought Marty was made of plutonium.

In spite of his messy ways, Marty was a very funny and outgoing child. And he was always on the move, even in his sleep. Throughout the night in his crib, he would squirm and rotate in a circle—a human sundial. Upside down and vertical in the crib, it must be twelve o’clock. Perpendicular and with feet pointing to the wall, must be three o’clock. And this was before he was walking.

He started walking when he was only ten months old or, rather, he started running. At last the spitting subsided. We celebrated by cleaning the carpets, the furniture, and tossing out our old T-shirt supply.

But now we had new challenges. He had all the mobility but none of the sense, so we couldn’t take our eyes off him for a second. He would literally bounce off the walls all day long and then collapse into a heap at night.

I was convinced that his active nature must be a sign of greatness, and of course he must clearly be a genius. I was always on the lookout for evidence of his infant Mensa status and Marty, at the tender age of 16 months, finally provided my proof.

One day as we were playing in our first floor family room, a fire engine blasted down the street. Hearing the wailing siren, Marty stood up, started running around the room, and began to yell, “Fire, Fire, Fire” while grabbing up his scattered toys.

I was blown away. He had, obviously, identified the sound of the fire truck; made the cognitive leap that a fire was nearby, and had the presence of mind to collect his valuable possessions and prepare to evacuate. As far as I knew, he’d never heard a fire truck before. I’d never explained what a fire truck was, and never talked about escape plans. He heard the sound, made the deduction and took action. Clearly, this was the work of a genius mind.

I phoned Steve at work, my mother, Steve’s mother, and several friends to tell them of Marty’s remarkable feat. I felt sorry for my friends. Their children were so ‘normal.’ How sad, I thought, to be them.

Several weeks later, we were again playing in the family room when a car drove by and loudly backfired. Marty heard this very sudden, loud noise and he jumped up, ran around picking up toys, while yelling “Fire, Fire, Fire.” He finally overturned a pillow, found a pacifier, held it up triumphantly, and said “fire” before he put it in his mouth. ‘Fire’ as it turned out, was his name for pacifier, and he was just scared by the loud noise and was looking for his pacifier for comfort. The ‘fire’ from weeks ago was just a cry for his pacifier, not the logically deduced plan I imagined.

And though I now knew that Marty did not commit the act of genius for which I gave him so much credit, I somehow never told my family and friends.

Well today something happened to make me forgive you. A new scientific study just came out that hints that eating chocolate may boost your brainpower. To quote the study, "Chocolate contains many substances that act as stimulants, such as theobromine, phenethylamine, and caffeine," Dr. Bryan Raudenbush from Wheeling Jesuit University in West Virginia noted in comments to Reuters Health.