When one of our children was confronted with something that was really hard to figure out, he used to say “I CAN’T KNOW”.

Of course, that was when he was pretty little…things are rolling a lot more smoothly now.

We always thought it was a hilarious and true statement.  How hard is it to get our heads wrapped around some new skill or bit of knowledge…and how tempting would it be to shut the whole “learning process” down and just say, “I can’t know”?

“I can’t know” is so much more definitive than “I don’t understand” or “give me a minute”…it’s the perfect way of saying, “just hold on a minute…why are you bothering me with this whole alphabet thing?  I need to get back to my transformers…let’s just drop this subject right now.”

At this stage of my life, I’m starting to figure out that there’s a lot that I don’t know…but I’m not apt to think that I can’t know….at least not very often.

And what I think I can’t know…I just ignore.