We’ve been doing a lot of Pink Links lately. If you’re not familiar with this word game, the idea is that you come up with a rhyming phrase and give a clue for it, and everyone else tries to guess the phrase. For example, if you said “distant sun”, I would answer “far star.”

The other day, I said “high fence.” It wasn’t the best clue, so when the boys were having trouble, I tried to help out. “Well,” I said, “high isn’t a very good clue. What would you call someone who is not short?”

“Tall!” my oldest said.

“You got it. Now what’s a kind of a fence that rhymes with tall?”

That stumped them both. They flailed around for a little bit and I went back into clue-giving mode. “Okay, think of other types of barriers. It’s not a kind of a fence. It’s a barrier.”

“What’s a barrier?”

“Something that gets between you and what you want. It’s something that’s in the way.”

“You mean a person!” the big guy shouted.

Of course. Cause what else gets in the way more than a person?

Wait a minute! You don’t think he was thinking of me, do you?