The Wrong Tear

We’d been watching The Traitors US together, Nadia, Maarten and me. We’re somewhere in season one, and by now Nadia had picked a clear favourite: Rachel.

I’m not even sure why Rachel specifically. Sometimes kids just decide someone’s their person and that’s that.

Unfortunately for Nadia, episode eight wasn’t Rachel’s finest hour.

Rachel got banished.

I could already see the disappointment. She’d been sitting curled up against me on the couch and suddenly one of the reasons she enjoyed the show was gone.

A little later it was bedtime.

While she was getting ready for bed, we were talking about all sorts of random things. School. Cycling. The next day. I was getting ready as well because I wanted an early night myself. I had a long drive ahead of me the next morning.

As I took off my belt, I was reminded of an earlier Mike’s Mind I once wrote about belts. One of those weird associative jumps that only make sense inside your own head.

So I told Nadia how my grandfather, my father’s father, used to discipline my dad with a belt when he was young.

Not because I had some profound lesson in mind. It just popped into my head.

To illustrate the story, I smacked the belt on the bed. That’s when I noticed a tear rolling down Nadia’s cheek. And instantly my brain started doing what brains do.

The Wrong Explanation

Ah. The belt. The story. Her grandfather as a little boy. She’s feeling sorry for Opa.

To be honest, I thought it was quite sweet. Here was this little girl empathising with something that had happened decades before she was born.

So I asked her: “Sweetie, are you sad for Opa?”

She looked at me and said: “No.”

Then she wiped her eye and added: “I’m just sad because Rachel was banished.”

I completely lost it. Not because she was crying. Because of how spectacularly wrong I had been. Within seconds I’d built an entire explanation in my head. The evidence seemed solid. The timing matched. The theory made sense.

The only problem was that none of it was true. The tear was real. The sadness was real. I just had the wrong cause. And maybe that’s also why I laughed so hard.

It’s remarkable how quickly we create stories to explain what we’re seeing. We connect a few dots, the picture looks plausible, and before long we’re convinced we’ve figured it out.

Meanwhile, my daughter was still mourning a reality-show contestant. And honestly, if I think about it, that makes perfect sense too.