Top o' the morning to you!

Breakfast at a diner always starts my day sunny side up.

  This time of year you never have to ask me twice to meet up and indulge in pumpkin pancakes. (The Village Diner in Glenside makes heavenly ones.)
   Some of my favorite family memories are set in diners. When our kids were little, they loved to drink the creamer right out of those tiny containers, perfectly sized for the under-5 set.

  And is there anything more adorable than a toddler tucked into one of those chunky, wooden, diner high chairs? I loved when their pint-sized feet stuck straight out, a whole human being in such a tiny package.

  One of my most embarrassing “aha” moments came at a diner in Ocean City, N.J. There were five of us around the table, including three teen-agers (our two plus one of our daughter’s best friends).

  I looked over at my husband, who was wearing a mathematical T-shirt I had given him a while back (emphasis on “a while”). 

  The shirt, a Think Geek favorite, says: “There are only 10 types of people in the world: Those who understand binary and those who don’t.”

  “You know,” I began, unaware of how red my face would be in a minute. “I’ve never really understood that shirt. I mean, it says ‘ten kinds of people,’ and then it just talks about two …”

  The lightbulb, which was probably installed back in 4th grade math class, distantly blinked on.

“Ohhhh! I get it!,” I said, beginning to laugh at how I had just lived out the T-shirt’s punch line. My husband — and those teenagers — were kind. Let’s just say that they laughed with me, and not at me.

     Math. It’s everywhere.