Brain games

As Elvi drove us in Minivan One to her aunt's place for our postponed Christmas-y dinner Monday night, she and I chatted with Children Two and Three while Child One read in the back seat.

I don't remember what we were discussing, but Child Two mentioned that when she's in a car, she chooses a spot and makes it jump. Child Three said he did, too. Elvi was confused, but without ever having discussed this before with the kids, I knew exactly what they were talking about.

I explained that you can choose a speck of dirt on the car window and, using parallax, you can make it "jump" over bushes, cars, fences, or any feature of the scenery you're driving by. I did it too when I was younger. I was right.

I welcomed my darling children to the world of mild OCD. I didn't tell them I sometimes softly click my teeth between streetlights - although, curiously, only when I'm a passenger, never when I drive. There's time enough for them to adopt that habit by themselves.

Elvi was flabbergasted that the three of us had this game in common. It has to be a function of neurology and not nurture, because all three of us developed the habit independently.