Kids’ nefarious plan appears to be working

There’s a growing sense of something evil in the bowels of my house (and I won’t even scare you with what’s in my own bowels). An evil so great that it’s starting to touch the very fiber of my soul.

Sadly, it’s my own kids who have hatched such an audacious plan.

What are they doing that has me looking over my shoulder at each sound, and lying awake for seconds each night before falling asleep?

They’re plotting to become much, much smarter than me. Now granted, that’s not a high mountain to scale, but still. I’m the dad. As the one running the household, aren’t I the one that’s also supposed to be the leader in the intelligence department, too?

But what makes their plan so evil, so absolutely dastardly, is the fact that they’re carrying it out in small subtle ways, and stretching it out over the years. It’s kind of like the old stand-up bit by George Carlin. Pretending to be a news anchor, Carlin said, “Researchers have found that saliva causes stomach cancer . . . but only when swallowed in small amounts over a long period of time.”

How bad is it? It’s bad bad.

Take this rather average example. I’m currently studying for the GMAT, a test I need to return to graduate school. To say that I struggle with math is a vast understatement. So there I was recently, working away on a problem, all faculties focused on trying to solve the problem, and no real idea of what to do.

My son walks up, looks at the problem, and tells me the answer in less time than it would have taken me to be thrown from a bull. I tried to laugh it – just a lucky guess, I assured myself.

I believed that for a few days . . . when he did it yet again!

My daughter has been smarter than me for years. It happened shortly after she turned three. But diabolically, she only reveals it in small increments. Take her ACT results for example. She took this college entrance exam when she was a sophomore in high school. I remember chuckling to myself when she told me she had registered for it, thinking now we’ll see what happens.

I chuckled all the way until her results came in, and she had scored a 32. After that, I never tried to tell her how to study again.

And I’ve never told her that I actually scored above a 32 back when I was in high school. Of course, I had to add my two test score attempts together, but hey, that counts, right.

Hey, when your kids are plotting against you, you have to take every advantage you can. Even if they are smarter than me, I still buy the groceries, and I can still cut out the Oreo Double Stuffs faster than my son can solve a math problem. Talk about evil . . .