Picture this...

Me, sitting Indian-style on the floor, in my work clothes (nothing too fancy, just a blue dress with a narrow belt-- I've already taken off the shoes and pantyhose), with a big metal colander on my head. Evan running around me in circles, laughing maniacally when he stops every few moments to smack the colander with a little wooden hammer (it's meant to go with his toy workbench--but the hammer is rarely used in this fashion). Every so often I reach out to tickle him and he laughs like it's the funniest thing since Bob Saget trying to make money after the success of FULL HOUSE.

Flashback: my sister Amy and I running circles around my mom. We were probably 6 and 4 at the time. My mom wasn't wearing her work clothes, she was wearing a bathing suit, and it was summer time and we were in my old yard in Sterling Heights. If my mom was wearing a bathing suit, Amy and I were probably wearing them, too, and running circles around our mom was probably a break from running circles around our Spiderman sprinkler, which had been Amy's birthday gift from a boy named Devin Someone. I'm sure I had a similar feeling of joy when my mom would reach out to tickle me... but most notable was how her arms seemed like they could travel a complete circle around her upper body, as if they detatched from the shoulder and rotated in a full axis, the way a Barbie's head can move in isolation from the rest of her body. Since my mom's arms could do this, it meant that she could catch me no matter how fast I ran that circle.

I'm 28-- I'm still trying to run away.