The Magic Belly Button

Every day, I test my nine-year-old son on his math facts, using flash cards.  Yesterday, we worked on multiplication.  He did well for a while, then he had a harder problem.  He grabbed the card from my hand, pulled up his shirt, and shoved the card in the little crease by his belly button.

"What exactly are you doing?" I asked.

"Math," he said.

"How is shoving a flash card in your belly button, doing math?"

"It's a magic belly button.  It reads the card and tells me the answer."  He looked down at the card and jiggled it around his belly button.  "Eighty-one,"  he announced.

I took the card from him.  "Right."  I gave him another problem and he did the same thing.

"Sixty-three," he answered.

"Mmm hmmm," I said.

"See, Mama. It works.  Don't you wish you had a magic belly button?"

Um, yeah.