Thinking, Choreographed

Finn lost his Heat Blast, a Ben 10 character that apparently is really hot, in that literal way that things are metaphorically hot. You know, flame-wise.

I don't know anything about him. Or Ben 10. Or the cartoon they rode in on. I just know when my kid throws a fit at Toys By Us (as he calls hit) over some figure that morphs into a flashlight that I have to shell out the $4.99 to shut him up. Finn yells very loudly. And sometimes he will kick. Or bust a vein. And these days, we're all about keeping veins and arteries and such in their proper place.

So Heat Blast was AWOL. We looked, half-ass diligently yet very messily, all over the house. And couldn't find nary a trail. Apparently, his heat leaves no evidence or wake of its discharged energy, contrary to the second law of thermodynamics. Heat Blast is uncharted, off the map, leaves a very small carbon footprint.

Which got us--me and Finn--to thinking about where he could possible have gotten himself to. And got us to talking about our preferred methods and accompanying gestures of thinking.

For me, I prefer to sit still, perhaps with an alcoholic beverage, and stroke thumb and index finger across the point of my chin. Or I might place my index and middle finger underneath my lower lip. As long as that doesn't interfere with my beer.

Finn, though, chastised me. That's not the way it's done, he said. True thinking is done by tapping the index finger against the temple, sans beverage, while saying, "Now, where did I see Heat Blast last?" Over and over and over again. The kid is all about the mantra. As stated, aforementioned kid is persistent.

And that may very well be true thinking. Maybe, but not productive or necessarily accurate thinking. Because I found Heat Blast. Right where I tossed him about a month ago. In our trunk. I rescued him and was gleefully proclaimed heroic in my finding efforts.

But, Finn was careful to mention, I still "think" wrong.