How fun, how exciting, how twisted and replete are your moments that slide by your perceptions and deceptions and alignments with eternity, the moment that recurs, the days that transpire and regress, so that you go: “That is so cool.”

            Well, the other day, my seven year old was telling me riddles, some that made no sense at all and I asked her pointblank, as I was driving down the 5 below frozen winter streets in Colorado, “Who makes up these riddles anyway?” And without hesitation, she smiles and says to me, “The riddle makers.”

            Hmm, I thought, the riddle makers must be the same guys that live down the street from those quiet and solemn souls who live in seclusion and write all those vapid Chinese cookie fortunes, who have connections with the sages and saints who pen in scrolls the platitudes and pithy sayings that get in the heads of ordinary man.  “Be here now.” Be all you can be.” “Live for today.” “Eat, drink and be merry…”

            But a riddle maker is a little different, didn’t even know there were such people, and as I drove and thought, as my little girl began making up her own riddles, telling me she too was a riddle maker. 

            In this proverbial and ethereal life, in this wisp of time, take time to relish these child-like, childhood moments, these perceptions of babes, for we are in the mix, in the middle of a complicated simplicity where oxymoron’s and plebiscites all sit together explaining away all that is secret and unseen, all that is inexplicable and serene, labeling the obvious as, “Oh the riddle makers made that one up.”

One of those creative and crazy people who just couldn’t make it writing jokes for sitcoms and went out on their own to supplant ideas in seven year old minds, like, ok, try this one: Say you are in a dungeon, and there are no doors or windows. There is a desk, a saw, a mirror and a blue marker.  How do you get out?”

Figure this one out and you are better than a second grader, up there with genius and wisdom of the ages.

Who makes this stuff up anyway? The riddle makers.  A surly bunch for sure.