Once, I had a great opportunity to observe the differences in my 2 children, Liyana and Jan.
Both of them had to renew their passports before heading overseas to further their studies. Our house to the immigration centre to get your passport done is about 9 KM and would usually take about 15 minutes to get there.
For reasons I can’t recall, we had to do this separately.
First, I go with my daughter. We get into the car and all the way from home to the immigration centre, she updates me about her college life, her friends and what she wants to do in life. We get to the immigration centre and submit her documents. The officer says to come back in an hour.
So my daughter and I decide to go to a Mcdonald’s close by to have breakfast. Same thing happens. My daughter just talks and updates me about things in her life. We have breakfast and then go back to the immigration office. We had to wait a short while at the waiting area and my daughter updated me further.
We get her passport and on the way home, it is more of the same. I get a kick out of knowing about the going ons in my childs life and am happy to just soak in all the news and updates.
A few weeks later, it was time to bring my son to do his passport. I am looking forward to catch up with his updates and news.
We get in the car and he asks how far it is. I tell him about 15 to 20 min. He gets comfortable and then falls asleep. So I am driving to the immigration office, listening to the radio and my son snoring next to me.
We get to the immigration office parking lot. He wakes up. We head in and same thing, after submitting his documents the officer says, come back in an hour. I asked my son if he wanted to head to McDonald’s, hoping that the breakfast at McD’s would entice him to converse and update me similar to what happened with his sister.
Instead he declines and says, let’s just stay here. I thought, sure, less driving and we may as well catch up and chat here in the waiting room. Instead, he gets comfortable in the cold metal seats of the waiting room and promptly falls asleep.
An hour later, we have his passport in hand and he falls asleep in the car ride home.
My wife and I contributed our genes to both our kids but somehow, the sleeping gene must have gotten screwed up somewhere.
