Randomly peppered over a space of maybe 5-6 hours, from early in the afternoon to sometime in evening as playing of video games, playing of board games, and random and varied lines of conversation take place in the forefront, a minor detail filling in all the other chaos was a little guy just newly turned nine who, I kid you not, ate a decently-sized portion of something every thirty minutes I was there. And the family had apparently just finished a meal maybe an hour before all this -- you know, of the portions-of-many-different-things-and-no-really-have-seconds variety. What I think is messed up is that the kid is doing so much other stuff over the space of this time that the periodic requests for food easily get lost in the shuffle. He is in all honestly a pretty hyperactive kid, one of those who literally can't sit still for very long ... and I don't doubt that for any parent of any such kid would probably live in a virtual world of, "Can I --? Can I --? Can I --?"

I know, because I was such a kid, and I quite clearly recall my perception that older people tired of this game much more quickly than I would. When neither the reasoning nor your physical power are in your favor, wearing the other out through sheer repetition is a useful tactic.

So I mean, the rest of us are playing games and such, this little man is playing some with us, also playing with his game boys, gadgets and other toys while running back and forward all over the place and chattering like a street preacher the whole time. But my parable isn't about all that.

Now I'll grant you, his mom does make a cake of such fantastic deliciousness that your feel transcendence through your tastesbuds at every moist flaky morsel. And she'd made several such cakes for this occasion. But, she'd also declared that he couldn't have any more, after the big meal and a healthy helping of dessert after that.

So really, all the bids for all the other varieties of snacks were really just a fallback position from the hardline of getting more cake. You know, once denied, he would pause for a few moments (read: do a dizzying procession of other seeming random tasks) then go for the mac and cheese, or whatever else might be not as clearly on the "No" list as his initial request. Of course, the adults are being softened up the whole time to just finally giving in on the cake embargo.

Really, the crystalline genius of it is that of a diabolical genius. Dedication like that to getting what you want will actually take you quite far in life.

And of course, he did get his cake in the end. A great hunking slab of it. And as I'm pretty much deciding to have a whole slew of kids with CG, I have to wonder: Will I be totally fooling myself, if I think I'm in charge? When pretty much, from their earliest actions and awareness, way before speech, getting what they want has been centered in getting it from me?

Funny, because I've always thought of the kind of power I've seen mothers have over their kids, way into adulthood -- I hadn't really thought of the likelihood that children probably have lifelong built-in powers with their parents, as well.