Clearing the Air

It isn’t pollution that’s harming the environment. It’s the impurities in our air and water that are doing it. – Dan Quayle

Naomi and I were up early this Monday morning to pack her lunchbox and prattle a little bit about our day. She had a book to read me for extra credit. Music class, always a favorite in her heart and mind, was a mentionable item on the agenda today as well. I made a brief comment that most of my day would be consumed by air quality issues. Naomi has a visual reference for the emission stacks at my workplace. She knows we have to be careful what, and how much goes up those stacks. It’s a basic understanding of what goes up comes down eventually.

I'll digress here, though I didn't this morning, to be a complete bore amongst adults and provide a level of detail unfit for my kid. My Monday was consumed by a decision handed down by the Federal court last Friday. The court essentially scrapped the EPA Mercury rules, affectionately know as CAMR which I would decode as an acronym but life too short to spend bogged down in obscure references, which puts the EPA and regulated community back to the drawing board on mercury.

Anyway, back to the breakfast table. Naomi and I spoke of her music class, packed her lunchbox. We slapped some Spanish rice in a warm thermos, string cheese, juice box... I staged some reluctance on the fresh strawberry score just to make her feel she pulled a fast one. She nodded through my brief reference to air quality being the focus of my day. I listened to a book about a girl named Kit. We polished off the morning with coats, backpacks, boots and we were out the door. As I drove her to school, I silently congratulated us both on a morning sans screaming or crying. Yay, me! I thought, I might get the hang of this parenting gig yet.

We pulled up to the school building, I opened her door, and Naomi burst out of the car like she had just been uncaged. She was running, full clip, toward the building screaming, “Run, Mommy, its raining poison lava from the sky!” This wasn’t one of those sing-songy screams kids will sometimes do in a misguided attempt to be cute; this was a slasher-movie-don’t-take-a-shower-at-the-Bates-Hotel scream.

I stood there, stunned, both by what a fast runner she is and how utterly consumed she was in this vivid scene in her imagination. Poison lava? If the poison doesn’t get you the scalding temperature of the molten lava will? What’s a mom to do but join her kid’s slasher movie and scream her way into the school building?

Note to self: hold off on further elaborating the acid rain rules to Naomi.

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I filed this Op-Ed piece on the Democratic Presidential race under the category of thoughts I've had that are better articulated by someone a lot smarter, with lots more political sway. Yep, she copied my idea. Copy cat.