It started with NASCAR, really; which actually started with the Cars movie. Shef used to ask me to pause the race scenes so we could look at the numbers of the animated competitors. And then? Before I knew it, he had memorized the numbers and names of twenty-something NASCAR drivers. The 8 car is Dale Earnhardt, Jr., the 48 is Jimmie Johnson, 24 is Jeff Gordon.

“There’s 9! That’s Kasey Kahne!” he’ll exclaim as we drive by a gas station.

“Oh-kay!” I’ll respond, trying to muster up some kind of supportive enthusiasm.

It's gotten so the kid will only wear shirts with numbers on them. Sometimes I try to convince him that the size printed on the tag counts as a number, but that only works about ten percent of the time. He calls Dan and me by our numbers – 33 for him, 29 for me. He reads numbers off of digital clocks, radio tuners, billboards, buildings, and telephones. On Easter Sunday, I kept him busy in church by quizzing him on the numbers of the hymns.

I don’t know when this obsession will go the way of Tide and dolphins, but for now we’ve invested in four or five jersey-type t-shirts emblazoned with numbers to fend off morning melt-downs.