Gravity

We were late for church on Sunday. We are often the last ones to pull into the lot for the 9 o'clock service. I have a stubborn addiction to shaving minutes off the clock (reading the news online, making breakfast, putting the laundry in the washer) until, voila, it is actually time to be somewhere--and we haven't gotten into the car, much less locked our kitchen door.

The DQ was with her dad that morning, so it was just me and Mr. C. He has a higher tolerance for Weekend Edition than she does, and we were listening to Scott Simon (who happened to be filling in for Leann Hansen).

I knew we ought to be in our pew--but Simon was reminiscing about his acquaintanceship with commentator and journalist Paul Harvey. The popular radioman, aged 90, had died a day or so before. Apparently people would call the two of them, both Chicagoans, separated by generation and perspective, and ask them to compare themselves to each other. Neither would bite, said Simon, clearly a Harvey admirer.

Not a peep or protest from the back seat. But surely Mr. C must be bored? Apparently not. We continued to sit in companionable silence until Simons' commentary was over. Later that evening, he turned on CNN, where a host filling in for Larry King was doing a Harvey tribute. Look Mom, he's talking about Harvey, said Mr. C--before changing to the History Channel and a topic they seem to favor, the apocalypse.

I can't wait for tomorrow, when History has another show on gangs, said Mr. C happily. Normal boy stuff. And you know what? As much as I hate those gangland melodramas, I was pleased that my 11-going-on-45 year old was going back to his inquisitive, testoterone fueled, pre-adolescent ways. There's lots of time for nostalgia ahead.