McDonald's latest Happy Meal "toy" is a music CD of currently-popular songs remixed with kids screeching along with a 2nd rate artist in the lead. It's horrific in its own right. But Calleigh has found a way to torment her math-challenged Mom even more. Stay with me here...
We have maybe four of these CDs (let's say numbers 2, 3, 5 & 7). The numbers are printed on the sleeve and on the disk and Calleigh recognizes these numbers upon seeing them. She'll say, "let's listen to #3."
My car, my precious Honda CR-V, has a built-in, six-CD changer in the dash. You load one disk at a time and when you go to put in a new one, it just finds an opening within those 6 slots and pops it in for you. So you may put in Kidz Bop v.4 but it actually went into the #2 CD changer slot. (You with me so far?)
Calleigh is a detail-oriented little girl and on her good days, when she uses this gift for good and not evil, I pride myself in this and take credit for this attribute. Unfortunately, she's a child and doesn't understand the power she possesses. She also has an incredible sense of memory and after hearing one of these Kidz Bop CDs once, she knows the order of the songs. We'll be bopping down the road on the way to school to "Hey There Delilah" or "Beautiful Girls" and she'll (correctly) say, "is this song two?" (There are five songs on each CD.)
The final kicker in all of this is that I like to keep the "random" button on when I listen to CDs just to mix things up a bit and this was on the first time we listened to her music so in addition to remembering the slot number the disks are in versus their real, factory-issued number, I also have to manage the order and name of songs and remember the original, "random feature" order in which they were originally played for her.
So, in addition to navigating Nashville's notorious potholes and treacherous highways, avoiding crazy drivers, applying makeup and completing getting dressed, I'm working on complicated math on the way in each day. Here's a sample conversation from just yesterday:
Calleigh: Is this disk 5?
Valerie: [looks at display screen and it's blinking "2."] Ummm....yes. Five.
Calleigh: Which song is this?
Valerie: [in process of merging and crossing 3 lanes of traffic] Well....[looks at display screen, song 001 is shown.] It looks like...I think this is song 4.
Calleigh: No it's not. It's two.
Valerie: OK, it's two. Hey, remember when you used to watch movies in the car or read books?
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