I was talking to my kids the other night when I realized that almost every conversation with them practically follows a script. It goes something like this – and if you have kids in grade school, I’m guessing this is going to sound very familiar:

Me: So how was your day?

Child: It was fine.

Hang on, let me interrupt here for a second. At this point, I’ve already run out of material for the conversation. In Adult World, "How was your day" can be a launching point for 30 minutes of chat. Or three hours if one or both parties have been drinking or are a member of my wife’s family. When I get shut down with "It was fine," it’s the equivalent of serving the ball in tennis and having your opponent simply watch it sail past while eating a tuna sandwich. Anyway, let’s get back to the script as I try to do something to generate a little momentum.

Me: Uh, well, how about you tell me something about your day.

Child: (Silence. Whether the child is actually trying to think of something or merely waiting me out, I can’t be certain.)

Me: What was the most interesting thing that happened at school today? There had to be something.

Child: We had pizza for lunch.

(Pause.)

Me: What kind?

Child: Pepperoni.

(Pause.)

Me: What do you want to do tonight?

Child: Can I watch TV?

So, to recap, from that conversation I learned exactly nothing. The thing about the pizza doesn’t count; they have pizza almost every day at school. The only time I have any sort of meaningful conversation with my kids is when I'm ordering them around – brush your teeth, get your shoes on, pick that up, don’t eat that, stop drop and roll, run away from the light, together we can rule the galaxy, throw me the idol and I'll throw you the whip, whatever.

I don’t have any illusions about being my kids' friend. A good parent should be a parent and not a friend anyway, right? Besides, I'm a 40-year-old dude. I’m not going to have a lot in common with third- and seventh-grade girls. They like horses; I like football. They think Miley Cyrus stars in Hannah Montana; I think she stars in The Soup. (It’s Miley!)

After I have one of these conversations, which happen almost daily, I wonder to myself if there’s anything I can do to fix it. I don’t want to get 10 years down the road and still not be able to have a conversation with my kids. Then again, when Gustavo (not her real name) is 22, maybe we’ll have more in common. I mean, she’ll never be a football fan, but maybe by then we could bond over our mutual love of binge drinking or something.

What’s perhaps most ironic about this whole issue is that for every time I feel like I’m trying to pry open a super-glued clam, I find myself on the receiving end of one of these kinds of chats:

Child: Hey, Daddy, guess what?

Me: Four. (This is my standard answer to "guess what." I figure that one of these times, I’ll be right.)

Child: No. And Daddy, that’s not funny. Anyway, at school today, when we were in gym class, we were outside, and my friend found this really cool rock, and we wondered if it was, like, a diamond or something, and so then my other friend said we should lick it, because she heard that if you lick a diamond and it makes your tongue tingle then it’s really a diamond, and then we went to go pick it up, and it started moving, and we all screamed and ran away, and then my other friend got the hiccups really really bad, and…

You get the idea. Basically it’s a story that lasts for five minutes, is told as a single sentence, and has no point whatsoever. Oh, and most of the time when the child gets to the end of it, I don’t have a clue what the hell she just said. I try to pay attention and follow along. I really do. But it’s like listening to Paula Abdul explaining the new healthcare bill. At some point you just have to let go of the steering wheel and wait for it to be over.

I don’t get it. Either I can’t get my kids to talk enough, or I can’t get them to stop talking. I suppose the problem is that I’m 40 and they’re 12 and 8. They’re bored by my conversations and I’m bored by theirs. Which means, basically, that what we have is just like every other parent-child dynamic in the world. I suppose I shouldn’t worry about it. I’ll still keep trying. If I don’t, then it wouldn’t be long before we end up like Michael and Lindsay Lohan, communicating entirely through on-camera interviews on "TMZ."

I suppose there is one other option I could try. I could maybe watch more of their shows or play more of their games with them, things like that. Might give us a little bit more to talk about besides pizza and moving rocks.

Then again, that would probably mean watching entire episodes of "Witches of Waverly Place."

You know, on second thought, I’ll just wait until they’re 22.

Bob Rybarczyk (brybarczyk@sbcglobal.net) writes stuff. He wonders how Batman goes to the bathroom in that suit.