opposites

Mom was an elementary school teacher and her need to teach didn’t stop at the end of the school day. She was always looking for fun ways to teach my sister and I different things. I credit mom for passing this desire on to me.

When my girls were little I loved to play games in the car since we seemed to spend a lot of time going from place to place. It didn’t take long to discover the unique gift a car ride offered…my girl’s undivided attention. No TV, no board games, no video games, only a seatbelt, window and me with my fingers strategically placed in control of the radio. I will admit the desire to teach my girls was not my only motivation. The word amortize comes to mind…didn’t want to waste precious time. Admittedly I need help in this area, and to be fair this is not something mom passed on to me. Can’t blame her for this one.

Asking my girls what game they wanted to play always ended with the same response, “The opposite game!” The way we played was this: I would say a word and in turn they would respond with that word’s opposite meaning. It’s a pretty simple game, and fun. It usually went something like this, “tall, short….mean, nice…”

If the game lasted for a while the bigger challenge became thinking of new words to use. My girls liked to help when I got stuck and inevitably more than a few words would come up that I was pretty sure had no opposite meaning (like yo-yo’s, sandboxes, or dinosaurs). A few times we found ourselves in a debate about things like why the opposite of a dinosaur is a baby? I never got that one.

Now that my girls are older those car games have pretty much subsided and our iPod songlist seems to be the preferred distraction for helping time pass in our car. But this morning listening to music wasn’t feeling right and we decided to turn the music off. Sitting in silence for a while felt good but we all knew something was missing. After a few moments Allie cried out, “Opposites!” Smiles crept onto our faces and I felt a tinge of excitement in my stomach. Muscle memory kicked in and it was as if we hadn’t missed a day of playing our old favorite game…only this time it was played with a slightly different twist. ”short, Kobe Bryant…giant, microscopic….” Such a great measurement of how time changes our thoughts and perceptions.