The other day Garron reached a critical milestone in his young life. He broke his first bone. Not only that, he sliced his foot in the crack between the pinky toe and whatever the name of the toe is next to the pinky toe. A big nasty gash. After doctoring him with neosporin and band aids, we decided that it would be wise to take him to a real doctor since his toe was looking possibly gangrenous and like it could fall off if he did a single jumping jack. Garron hobbled into the doctor's office with a stagey limp. The doctor asked Garron how this happened with his pen poised. Garron took in a deep breath and started, "Well, I was playing Rollercoaster Tycoon on the computer downstairs and my sister, Tess, wanted to watch me and I was like nooooo, you can't because you're so annoying and then she screamed at me and I screamed at her, and I closed the door on her like this and then we started pushing and I began to chase her and then, see, I hit my foot on the desk . . ." Because of the doctor's perplexed expression and frozen pen, I interrupted, "He hit his foot on a sawhorse really hard and sliced in between his toes." The doctor nodded his head and wrote that down.

Garron tells a story the same way I do. Which is crappily. It reminds me of how when I was little I saw a mouse in the bathtub. It was the middle of the night and I came creeping into my parents' bedroom to tell them. I began the narrative like this: "Mom? Dad? Remember how I was telling you that when I was playing at Karen's house the other day we saw a mouse run from her backyard into ours?" My groggy parents stared. "Well, I think that the mouse came to our house and into my bathroom and fell into the tub and I think that it's the same one, and it's cute even though it doesn't look like a mouse in a cartoon." It took my mother a moment to catch on. She nudged my dad — "Larry, I think she's saying that there's a mouse in the bathtub."

Long story short: Garron ginsu-knifed his foot, broke his toe in the process, and learned that the Fine Art of How Not to Get to the Point is hereditary.