Pastafarian

Evan is sharp as a whip. Sometimes. The other day Vivian had taken her first standardized tests (the school insists that it doesn't teach to the tests). She did well. But her English language grammar skills were not up to snuff. I asked what kinds of questions she had trouble with.

"Oh - I never remember the parts. Like what's a verb"
"I don't have a problem with that", Evan chimed. But he claims he knows everything.
"Evan - you are in kindergarten - what do you know about verbs?" Vivian countered.
"They are action words. Like run or jump or smell", he replied, without looking up.

But the other day the poor lad's brain got stuck. We were eating pasta and green beans with smoked salmon for dinner. He had finished the smoked salmon that was on his plate and most of the pasta. While refilling Vivian's plate I threw a forkful or two of pasta on Evan's plate. 

He started sobbing. The best we could discern was that he wanted the pasta that was already on his plate. Not any more, not any less. But he couldn't stop crying. Jo tried to calm him down and eventually left home for an evening appointment. I let him cry. Finally - after about 30 minutes of heartbroken sobbing I had to do something. I tried to hold him and comfort him and talk him down from the ledge. But nothing worked. Frustrated, defeated and tired of listening to huge sobbing outbursts, I distracted him instead. That worked like a charm, but even hours later he couldn't quite explain why he was so sad when I put some pasta on his plate.

I know I only kicked the problem further down the road. Someday he or I'll be paying a lot of money to a therapist to try to understand what the heck happened here. Or perhaps the Flying Spaghetti Monster has just revealed himself to Evan and his world will never be the same again.