Narcolepsy

The story at the heart of this post requires a bit of background...

Last night, as we're playing in the yard after dinner, I get a call from my good friend Troy. He was on his way home to Houston, after attending our friend Jim's wedding Saturday evening, and his flight was delayed 4 hours. Since we live 10 minutes from the airport, he called to see if I wanted to hang out for a bit during his delay. I went to pick him up, and on my way over, the speedometer on my car suddenly got stuck at 100 MPH - a speed I, in no way, got anywhere near to while driving. It fluctuated oddly, never dropping below 80 MPH as I drove to the airport and back. So, this morning, I called the dealership from which we bought it, and scheduled a drop-off for this evening at 6:30PM.

Since that added a little wrinkle to our evening's plans, Laura and I decided that, since it was a carpool day, we'd pick up the boys from daycare, stop off somewhere to get a quick dinner that we could eat in the car, then retrieve my car from home and drive it out to the dealership. The (unfortunately) most convenient stop between daycare and home for an in-car meal is a McDonald's, so that's where we went.

The boys ordered their standard, chicken nuggets, and Laura doled out their meals accordingly, as I went back inside to have them correct my order (typical). As we're on our way home, Laura looks in the rear-view mirror and asks me, "Is Kian falling asleep?"

I turn around and affirm that he was dozing off. I quickly yelled at him, "KIAN! Daddy's going to eat those nuggets if you don't wake up." He shot up, and said, "NO DADDY!" as he swatted his hand at me. He proceeded to take half-hearted bites from the nugget he'd started eating, all the while, drifting off to sleep as he chewed. We repeated the yelling/swatting bit a couple of times, until he finally gave up the ghost and passed out. His nugget tumbled down into his lap, and I grabbed the remaining nuggets and their container from the ledge of car seat between his legs. Jack and I divided up the 3 remaining nuggets - 2 for Jack, 1 for me - as we continued on the drive home.

After dropping off the car for service, we're driving down Rockville Road when, from the corner of my eye, I notice Kian stirring. I turn to look, as Laura checks in the rear-view, and see him rubbing his nose as he starts to awaken. He then starts mumbling something to all of us, grabs the leg of his shorts, and bends over to try to eat his shorts! He makes several futile, slumber-hobbled attempts at eating his shorts, then whines in frustration. At that point, his hands brush across the crumpled napkin next to the nugget in his lap, so he grips the napkin and starts biting into it! Laura and I start to laugh, try to wake him by calling his name, but fail. Then, he roots around in his lap, again, makes contact with the nugget there, then grabs it and shoves it into his mouth. He sits there, quite content, and still fairly unconscious, shaking his head side-to-side and mumbling something through the muzzle of fried chicken stuff being slowly ground down in his maw.

It was seriously like the 20-30 minutes that transpired during his nap never even happened, and he just subconsciously picked right back up where he left off - yelling at me for snatching his food, and trying to cram as much of it down his gullet as he could before I swiped it from him. Too funny...

(K)