Enter Mythbusters. Van and I LOVE Mythbusters, the TV show. If you haven’t seen, it is awesome.

Hosted by Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage — and co-hosted by Tory Belleci, Kari Byron and Grant Imahara — the MYTHBUSTERS mix scientific method with gleeful curiosity and plain old-fashioned ingenuity to create their own signature style of explosive experimentation.

In each episode, the Mythbusters team tests folkloric myths using science and usually explosives. Some examples include: Can you make a boat completely out of duct tape? Can a sonic shock wave shatter glass? Is it possible for bullets to bend around obstacles with a side arm flick of the wrist? Can match heads alone fire a homemade cannon? Can a 7-foot ball of Legos become a rolling weapon of mass destruction? etc. etc.

We like Adam Savage more, but we like Jamie.  Grant Imahara is the real hero here, because he is the person that controlled R2-D2 in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace.

So recently, when the daily question of video games vs reading came up, I decided to squash it once and for all and prove to Van that he, himself, actually enjoyed reading more than video games by using a scientific method.

We would do a test case, like they do in Mythbusters. First, I would watch him play video games for half an hour and write down how many times he laughed. Then we would read, “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” to see how many times he would laugh during reading. This test was a tad loaded on my part, because I know that Van laughs hysterically while reading DWK.

We created a table to make it more official and ran the tests. There was no laughter during the video game. There were 5 laughter outbreaks during the reading. I showed him the table and he got it. I wish I could have bottled the look on his face. Table is now on fridge, for every time I get hassled about reading.

After about 30 seconds, Van yells, ” YEAH! GEICO!! I GET IT! BUT IT DOESN’T MAKE ANY SENSE!!”

Me: Van, which flavor do you want?

Van stands back looks at case.

Van: Really? I mean… honestly, does it matter? Don’t all Gatorades taste pretty much the same?

The next morning I woke up and found this gingerbread math equation.

Translation: Van had four gingerbread houses. Two collapsed. How many are left?

On Tuesdays, I let Van sleep with me. He gets to pick where he wants to eat out, I read to him instead of him reading to me and he gets to sleep with me. Big Tuesday. So this past Tuesday, Van is hard at work on the side of the bed that he sleeps on. He has gotten a stool and is laying out his slippers and folding his Snuggie (my mom made him a pint size Snuggie with planets on it) and setting out a thermos of water. Not two feet away is this sign.  He explains to me that the sign is just in case he accidentally walks past the stool with all of his morning amenities and needs a reminder to “Go Bak!”

This “Look Dawn Van!” memo was posted on his bedroom door. When I looked down myself to see why he needed a reminder to look down, I witnessed a long train of toys set up side by side. When I asked what the deal was, he explained, “the sign will tell me to look down, and when I look down, then I will slip on this ball, and the ball will roll into the car, and the car will go down the track and trigger the spinny thing, and the spinny thing runs the car into the snuggie, and the barrel shoots off that way and sets off the alarm clock.”

Me “You know what Van? You are funny. You know that?”

Him “Sometimes.”

Me “Some people think your mom is funny. What do you think of that?”

Him “You should tell them that you got it from your son.”