Deep, philosphical conversations with Jake.

For whatever reason, Jake waits until he and I are out alone doing something to have his deep discussions. We have discussed religion on our walks to school, politics and the Presidential Election on the basketball court before anyone else arrives, and race relations and segregation/the Civil Rights movement on a bike ride. 

He gives these topics waaayy more thought then I give him credit for (or than I remember doing at his age). So it's awesome to see the wheels turning while we talk. I love having these discussions with him, it keeps me sharp having to figure out how to say what needs to be said in a appropriate way, without putting the bias of my opinion into the conversation. It's important to me (and I assume Marisa to, although we haven't come out and discussed it) that he develop his own opinions (yes, even if they are contrary to mine) based on his take of the evidence and his feelings on the matter.

Yesterday in the car on the way to run some errands, he decided the time was right to discuss Creationism v. Evolution. He asked me, "Dad, who was the first person on the Earth?". As I started to formulate the discussion the way I generally do, "Well, bud, it depends on what you believe..." He jumped back in, "I think it was probably Babe Ruth..." I really almost drove the car off the road because I was laughing so hard the tears were obscuring my vision.

We finished our discussion as per usual, eventhough this is a little harder topic for me to keep my opinion out of, but I think I did a pretty good job of being impartial. But I made it pretty clear that the first person on Earth was Ty Cobb.....