My children have been asking me the really difficult questions of life again. No, not the sex questions. Thanks to parents who spoke openly and clearly about such things with me, the sex questions never stymied me. I�m talking about the really difficult questions most of which come down to: why do I talk the strange way I do?

The questions began when Kat started school. She came off the bus totally indignant from junior kindergarten one day. The teacher had given her a standardized language test and she had missed one question. She considered it my fault. �Why,� she accused. �Didn�t you tell me that halves had to be equal?� I gulped. I thought for a moment. Then I did what any young mother would do in such a situation. I blamed my own mother. �I�m sorry,� I told her. �Grandma used to warn me to cut the halves equally and ask if I wanted the bigger half too.�

The problem only got worse although it did so incrementally. A few years later, Kat, her head filled with school-taught vocabulary, asked me why I use �a couple� when I mean �a few.� I answered as directly as I could. I do it because I don�t know the difference even though Mr. Philately has explained it to me a couple of times, surely at least five or six, when he became concerned about what I meant when I said we were �a couple� (although I told him that was an entirely different affair.)

Then we advanced to my problems with water. I had had some tiff with one of the girls and the child had apologized for whatever sin she had committed. �That�s water over the bridge,� I soothed, until either Day-Hay or Kat pointed out that water over the bridge does damage. It�s water under the bridge that�s not memorable. No wonder we had serious flood damage a few years ago. I let down the drawbridge and the water came running right over it.

All of which brings me to 942. If I�ve told you this story 942 times, please forgive me. I know that I�ve told Day-Hay not to do high kicks in the kitchen 942 times. The 942nd time was yesterday, just as the 942nd time was a few days before. But yesterday, my exasperation lead her to ask me why I tell her everything exactly 942 times. (She lives by the motto that desperate times call for distracting one�s mother.)

Most mothers tell their children things a thousand times. Some mothers tell their children things a million times. Me, I tell my children things exactly 942 times�always. I know why I prefer 942 times to a million times. A million times is obviously an exaggeration. I know why I prefer 942 times to a thousand times. �942 times� is more linguistically satisfying. Say �a thousand times� and the phrase slips by quickly. Say �nine hundred and forty-two times� and you can stretch it out so that the phrase has importance. But none of that really explains it.

Why not 943? Why not 876? I don�t know and I wish you�d stop bugging me�and I�ll tell you that 942 times.

|