My son's favorite color has changed from light blue to green. This means that we are now buying green pencils, t-shirts, and mugs. My other son still love navy blue. Not light blue, not aqua. Dark blue only.

This reminds me that when I was little I also spent a lot of energy defining my favorite everything. I had a favorite color (red), a favorite animal (horses), even favorite numbers (4 and 9).

I also practiced my signature for hours, practicing for that day I would have my own checks. Little did I know that my time would have been better spent memorizing PIN numbers, but how could I have known?

Isn't it charming, how kids do that? What I was doing when I was a kid, and what my kids are doing now, is looking for what makes me, well, <em>me</em>. In a childish way I was defining myself, something so ethereal, by solidly outward ways. But at least I was thinking and acting about what defines me.

The irony is that now as an adult, when the concept of self is even more concrete and importnatn, i s