I often don't feel like I have very much in common with my younger son, other than our shared interest in Notre 
Dame football and basketball.
The kid's a whiz at math--and he sure doesn't get that from me. He played on a basketball team for the first time this year and even scored a basket during a game. I played for three years in middle school and never racked up a single point. And his taste for trivia runs toward sports statistics, rather than literary or historical information.
But we do share a dislike for something: specifically, ticking clocks. Even more specifically, loudly ticking clocks. After a few too many enthusiastic Nerf basketball games took out our family-room clock, I hung a football-team-themed clock on a different wall in the family room. It looks nice in there, but it doesn't sound so nice. Mr. Third Grader commented one quiet morning, "That clock irritates me."
"Me too," I told him.
And we're not alone in this. I have a niece who, when visiting her grandparents, will remove a ticking clock from the wall just outside the guest bedroom, because she insists that it keeps her awake at night. She hides it in the office closet and puts it back on the wall the next morning.
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