One of the guilty pleasures of having kids is that on occasion you get to mock them. This is especially true when you have a teenager in the house as teens are so thoroughly convinced of their own brilliance that it’s kind of fun to see them stumble a bit. (This also applies to adults who act like teens.)

Last week, while She Who Must Be Obeyed was out, my oldest, Sara, was assigned to cook ramen noodles for supper. She chopped the cabbage and ham and washed the bean sprouts and managed to fry it all up without burning down the house. She then set about to boil the noodles, which according to the instructions required four minutes of boiling time. Being better at math than her father (which, for the record, is true), she quickly deduced that three packages of noodles required 12 minutes of boiling time.

Being the dutiful father that I am, I ate all of what seemed like several pounds of mushy yet tasty noodles and encouraged her to be more careful in the future. I then went to my desk and started giggling a bit.

That said, I’m hardly in a position to judge.

When I was 15 or so, the most grown up thing I could legally do was ride my bike from our house in the Golden Meadows subdivision to a grocery store I vaguely remember being called the Hayden Mercantile.

I remember one occasion where mom told me she wanted me to go the store. I grabbed my bike and started racing down the hill, wind in my badly styled, bowl-cut looking hair. Right near the elementary school, mom’s car suddenly swept in front of me and halted my progress in a move straight out of a police drama.

She pointed out two fatal flaws in my plan. One: I didn’t actually have any money to buy the things she wanted me to buy. Two: I didn’t actually know what she wanted me to buy.

If I remember correctly, I received money and instructions and bought all the required goods and delivered them as instructed. It wasn’t as much fun as it should have been, though, as mom had also pointed out something along the lines of the entire point of sending me was that she wouldn’t have to drive, which my haste had kind of required.

Even my teenage brain could understand that. But then again, as a teen, I already knew everything.

(Luckily for this blog, I’m sure I have a few more moments of brilliance like that hiding somewhere in the back of my head.)