No reason.

So I come downstairs to check on the progress of dinner–Kevin’s out back with the dogs, the kitchen smells of garlic bread, and as I come around the corner, I discover Kevin’s youngest, standing straight up with his back pressed against the small swatch of wall on one side of the laundry door, staring intently at the opposite wall, which contained nothing more exciting than the pantry door.

This is not the place one generally expected to encounter a small child. I raised an eyebrow.

"No reason," he said, giggled, and ran away.

One of these days, I will learn to stop trying to apply logic to a non-logical system, but I have this horrible personal failing in that, while I paint surreal and whimsical things quite happily, I still keep expecting humans in the real world to act in a reasonably logical (if not always rational) manner.

I know, I know, this is horribly misguided of me, you think I’d learn, but part of my boundless personal optimism is based on the belief that if we could all just sit down and talk sensibly, it’ll all work out. I’m not sure if this makes me a humanist or just an idiot, but as a coping mechanism, it has served me well lo these many moons.

With kids, I assume there’s got to be a logic there somewhere, and I am merely too large and oblivious to be aware of the important bits that lead one, quite logically, to stand in an empty room gazing fixedly at the pantry. I remember well enough that there were many intensely vital and compelling things that occurred below the adult radar, or comprehension, so…probably there’s a logical explanation.

Probably.

Kevin shrugs, and is of the opinion that as staring into space breathing shallowly is not killing his brother, generating mess, or making loud noise, it is not something worth wondering about, which is why he’s a parent and I will never, ever be one.