Fun Fact!

Remember that kid from the movie Jerry Maguire? You know, the annoying kid that the movie producers tried to make all cutesy with his big glasses, frothy mop of hair, and adorable dimples? Sure, he was cute. Cute as a honey badger. I know better. And, if you've ever spent more than five minutes in the presence of a kid, you know better, too.

Honey badgers have blond, spiky hair, too.

Here's what the movie producers didn't take into consideration. We know that kid wasn't messin' around with all those facts he kept spouting. We know he meant business. Kids are natural born badgerers. I know this because I, too, have one of these honey badger children. As in, I am badgered relentlessly with random facts and information. And when I say badgered, I am referring to the steady stream of trivia, factoids, one liners, "Fun Facts!", and "Hey, Mom! Did you know...s" that run as a nearly non-stop accompaniment to my parenting life. 

While I have no doubt that I am currently raising the greatest trivia master that the world has ever seen, it's a little difficult to appreciate at times, seeing as she's currently too young to cash in on it. Trivia night at the local pub tends to be a 21 and over affair. 

As I type this, I am being regaled with facts as far ranging as video game trivia, the origin of chocolate chip cookies, quirky traits that twins share, and the intricacies of watermelon hybridization. I'm sure someday, as I proudly watch her raze the competition on Jeopardy, I'll understand that all this was totally worth it. 

But in the meantime, I'm starting to consider the possibility of instituting a trivia-free zone for the summer. Or, perhaps I'll prohibit the reading of anything educational. Maybe I could reinstitute a "Quiet Time" like when I still outweighed them and could make them stay in their rooms for an hour after lunch. Or at the very least, I could try banning the words, "Hey, mom!" from my offspring's vocabulary. 

Fun Fact: Summer vacation is exactly 74 days long! That's also about 1/1,000 the length of a Giant Tortoise's life span, and about 6,000 times the length of Louis-Antoine's reign in 1830 in France.