Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.

The latest holy-crap-I-lost-something story does not even have the decency to feature an actual lost object.

On Monday Ryan and I went to his favorite children's museum - the one with the awesome water room that supplies the kids with raincoats but still always ends up resulting in the need for a full change of clothes. We stayed all day.

When it was time to leave, we put on our coats.

"Where's my hat, Mommy?"

"You didn't wear a hat today. Remember, you had your Mickey Mouse sweatshirt, and you wore the hood instead of a hat." The sweatshirt, of course, had gotten wet in the water room, and he was now wearing a regular shirt, not a hoodie. I pulled up the hood on his jacket.

Ryan dissolved in tears. "Can you take me back to the museum?" he screamed in a panic. "Got to find my hat!"

"Baby, you didn't wear a hat today. Your hat is at home."

"My hat is LOST! Take me back to the museum! Got to get my hat in the water room!"

I tried to convince him that he was wrong. I showed him the wet sweatshirt he had been wearing earlier.

"Got to find my hat, I'll be happy."

It's very hard to win a rational argument when your opponent is screaming and sobbing and going boneless.

I carried him to the car.

As I buckled his seatbelt, through his tears he asked over and over again to go back to the museum to find his lost hat. I tried one last time to reason with him, but he was positive his hat was in the museum, and I was the monster preventing him from retrieving it.

I started driving, thinking the motion of the car would settle him. I played his favorite CD - the soundtrack to The Muppets - loud enough for him to hear over his own crying.

No change.

He cried the whole way home - forty five minutes of him bawling while I sang "Life's a Happy Song" and clucked along with Camilla the Chicken's rendition of Cee-Lo Green's "F**k You."

He was still crying when I parked in front of our building.

Still crying in the elevator.

As soon as we were inside our apartment, I pulled his hat out of the closet.

"See, here's your hat. It's not lost."

Ryan maintained his own set of facts. He cried, "MY HAT IS LOST!"

I showed him the Mickey Mouse sweatshirt. "See, this is what you wore this morning. It's right here. Everything's ok."
He just kept crying.

At a loss for what else to do, I brought him to his room, covered him with a blanket, and told him to come find me when he was ready to be rational.

Bock bock booooock.