twenty questions

Many of us have some idea about how we and people very close to us think. But this is a skill not all of us have.
When my kids were small, we would go for long drives beyond the suburbs and during these drives, would play twenty questions. We would also play this on summer nights, during power cuts, lying on the terrace.
The game involves one player thinking of a famous person, and the other/others asking him questions which he must answer truthfully with either a yes a no. The maximum number of questions allowed is twenty.
The thing is, I knew exactly who my husband and kids are likely to have chosen and could often guess within five or six questions. But my husband could not do the same. The children were somewhere in-between.
Knowing someone is a skill that has to be built over the years I think. It comes with the day to day tending that mothers do. That's why fathers of the previous generations who believed childcare is the mothers' domain, do not know their children, and in their old age, find their own children are strangers.
The fathers who thought they were smart in outsourcing childcare to their wives, have really missed a huge part of life.