I’ve discovered on this roadtrip that small children have a different sense of time and history than the rest of us do. Apparently, “history” is the time from now all the way back until they were born and “ancient history” is anything before that.

It has also become clear that in their minds, Mommy could well have owned a pet dinosaur or sat next to General Washington in math class.

To illustrate, we are currently on a family roadtrip through southern Virginia. We took the girls to Yorktown and watched a movie on the Revolutionary War. The girls paid particular attention to the clothing of the time, as was evidenced a few days later.

When we arrived in Virginia Beach, I took them on a brief car tour of places I used to live, the high school I attended for a time, a historic site where my dad worked, and a few other landmarks. When we arrived at the elementary school I attended, I said, “Ladies, this is where mommy went to elementary school.” Tate stared at the building for a few minutes and then yelled, “Wow Mom, until now, I hadn’t realized how OLD you really are.”

I hustled them back in the car to continue the tour. I told them that I used to ride my bike from my house near the elementary school to the historic site where their grandpa worked, a distance of a few miles. I mistakenly thought they would be impressed by my former athleticism. Instead, Cat,said (in a disturbingly genuine tone), “And you did this in a bonnet and long poofy skirts? Wow, Mom, good job.”