Embedded Files
This year Doug finished most of his coursework for his PHD and started working in Dayton OH. He gets home for a four-day weekend every other weekend. He’s looking for a new job closer to our house in Maryland. Daniel started piano lessons and second grade. He turned 7 in October.
My sister Jeani died of breast cancer in September. We miss her very much. She had more strength in adversity than anyone I know. -Lesli
Every year, we (well, mostly Lesli) keep a journal of funny or interesting things people in the family say. (It helps us feel more like we’re living in a sitcom.) -Doug
Science
Doug: Time for a geology quiz. What do you call the part between two mountains?
Daniel: Valley.
Doug: What do you call a mountain that’s so small it’s not really a mountain?
Daniel: Dirt?
(Doug laughs)
Daniel: Fake mountain?
Doug: I was looking for ‘hill.’ What do you call a whole bunch of mountains in a row?
Daniel: A mountain parade?
[Doug] I pointed out a person’s footprints and the tracks of a dog on the frozen pond near our house. I then showed Daniel a smaller set of paw prints with five toes and asked him what kind of animal made them. Daniel considered carefully and then said, “Probably a pig. Or a moose.”
[Daniel was talking to his Grandma on the phone and telling her about a human model with skeleton, muscles, and major organs which he’d just gotten and she was asking questions about it.]
Grandma Stay: So is it a visible man or a visible woman?
Daniel: I don’t know which—it doesn’t have any hair.
Doug: Let’s go eat breakfast.
Daniel: I want an Italian breakfast this morning.
Doug: What do Italians eat for breakfast?
Daniel: Meat flavored cereal.
Daniel [pointing out places on his world-map bouncy ball]: ‘And this is the airhole that keeps our world from exploding.’
Daniel [looking at an M.C. Escher etching of a building where the center bulges out]: “It’s like someone went up into space and got what they have there instead of air—it’s called humility. They puffed it up with humility and now it can float around in the sky.”
Doug: They’ve invented a cheap new meta-material with a negative index of refraction that will be used to make invisibility cloaks.
Lesli: I’ll believe it when I see it.
Daniel [at airport]: How does the plane see in the cloud?
Lesli: They can’t see very far in a cloud. They use the plane’s instruments to see how high it is and which direction its going.
Daniel [incredulous]: How could it use instruments to see how high it is?
Doug: Not musical instruments—a different kind of instrument. It means sensors or dials and computer screens. Although I suppose maybe you could rig up a flute to measure air speed as the wind blew over it—by how loudly it sounded…
Daniel: What's the softest instrument?
Doug: A harp, I guess.
Daniel: The plane should use a harp for landing, then.
[Doug] I was telling Daniel about how the island of Hawaii was formed and how the first people came there in canoes. Daniel said, ‘They probably came from Venice.’ I asked him if he meant Venice, Italy, and he said, ’Yes, because most of the canoes are in Venice.’
Daniel [on phone to Doug]: How far does space go? Because everything has to have an end.
Religion
[Doug] On the way home from church one Sunday, I was trying to explain to Daniel the idea of different religions. I asked Daniel if he knew anyone Jewish. Daniel thought for a minute and then said, “Yes—Grandma Stay.”
Doug asked Daniel which Christmas song he had liked best from the choir at church. He said his favorite was the one about “Beth the Hamster.” (The actual line referred to a “Bethlehem Star.”)
Daniel: What does Satan look like?
Lesli: I don’t know. Probably like a person.
Daniel: Probably like a mean person with eyebrows like this: \ /
Someone bearing their testimony in Salt Lake– “The church is so, so true I just can’t believe it.”
Doug: Go put your socks on. It’s time to go.
Daniel [under his breath]: Okay, but I’d like you to know I sometimes don’t wear socks. I’m like a sock-atheist.
Lesli [to problematic dvd player]: Please work. I’ll be your friend if you work.
Daniel: Um, Mommy, DVD players don’t have minds.
Daniel keeps saying (playing Bible): The Philippines are coming! The Philippines are coming!
Doug: No, it’s the Philistines.
Daniel: What is 8 minus 7 minus 6 minus 5 minus 4 minus 3 minus 2 minus 1?
Doug: Negative 20.
Daniel: No. It’s zero. There’s no such thing as negative numbers.
Doug: Does that mean you’re a negative atheist?
Daniel: Yes.
Daniel [at bedtime, under his breath]: What am I going to do about my tooth? I’ve prayed three times in a row . . .
Lesli: What did you pray three times in a row for?
Daniel: That it would come out without pulling it and without me swallowing—and at school.
Lesli: Why at school?
Daniel: Because—they have these little tooth holders at school.
[Lesli helping Daniel with prayers]
Daniel: Why didn’t you tell me to pray for Pilchard? [the cat]
Lesli: Well, you don’t have to.
Daniel: Of course I don’t have to.
I mean, who has to do any of this stuff?
Hair
Doug: Why don’t you have a mustache?
Daniel: Because I’m not grown up.
Doug: I think you’d look good with a mustache. You should let it grow out.
Daniel: I am letting it grow out.
Before giving Doug a haircut (his first in 6 months), I complained about the length of his hair. He said, “I like my hair. I feel like I’m going back in time. I’ve been thru the 90’s, the 80’s and now I’m entering the 70’s.”
Names
Daniel: It will be fall soon. Guess what I wish?
Lesli: What?
Daniel: My last name is a clue.
Lesli: You wish it was summer?
Daniel: I wish it would stay summer.
Daniel: Why do you call Poppy ‘Bubby?’
Lesli: It’s just a nickname I call him, like how I call you ‘cookie.’
Daniel: But I don’t even have any of those letters in my name . . . . except for I . . . and E.
Daniel: Azalea—that’s a strange name. It sounds like it goes all the way up to heaven.
Movies
Lesli [watching a movie]: That actress doesn’t look like a model.
Daniel: Of course not. She’s not 3 inches tall or plastic. [thinking of his Star Wars action figures]
Daniel: "Do the Japanese like horror movies? This is the most horrific movie I ever saw." [referring to the Japanese children’s animated movie ‘Kiki's Delivery Service.’ One element he found particularly awful was the cat losing its ability to speak. Also people dangling from the blimp.]
Ethics and George Lucas
Lesli [about a little plastic toy accessory with plastic guns and stuff on it]: What is this?
Daniel: Oh—that goes with my Obi-Wan character [doll], but I wanted to pretend he was Jesus and you can’t pretend he’s Jesus with this on.
Lesli [trying to mitigate the implied violence in the video game ‘Lego Indiana Jones’]: When you knock the [lego] people apart, they come back alive in jail, or somewhere else.
Daniel: No, they come back alive in Hell.
Daniel: I wonder how much money I’ll have when I grow up.
Lesli: I don’t know. We’re not supposed to want a lot of money. We’re not supposed to care about money. We’re supposed to care about other things. But it’s hard. It’s very hard.
Daniel: Well, Han Solo was able to do it.
Daniel’s 4 yr. old Cousin Merrick
[Pretending they are on a train with a kitten]
Daniel to Merrick [nonchalant]: They let the kitty on because the engineer is a friend of mine.
Genevieve Demos: Daniel and Merrick are cute together. They’re like dolls from two different manufacturers. It’s not just that one is tall and skinny and the other is short and cute, they’re completely different shapes. Even their heads are different shapes.
[Lesli] I told Daniel we were going to Steve and Kelli’s house but that we couldn’t stay long. Daniel said, “I know why. It’s because I have cat germs and Merrick is allergic to cats.”
Education
Daniel: Do you know who the main character at my school is?
Lesli: What do you mean by the main character?
Daniel: The most important. It’s Mrs. Johansen. [school counselor]
Lesli: Why?
Daniel: She speaks in the microphone every day. [for morning announcements]
[Doug] Daniel missed points on his math proficiency test because he couldn’t “express how he arrived at a solution.” So I asked him the simplest word problem I could think of: “If you have three apples and I give you five more apples, how many apples do you have?” He told me eight. Then I asked him how he got the answer and he said, “I just looked in my head at what the answer was.”
Later, for homework, he had to do a ridiculously simple pattern matching game where you fill in the next number in a series. He turned it into a game where he gave the wrong answer twice before giving the right answer for each problem. When he wrote down how he arrived at the solution he wrote, “I just picked random numbers.”
We had a little talk about how school is about giving the answer the teacher wants, and how to figure out what the teacher wants. I told him I thought his answers were very clever, but for standardized tests he needed to use math words like ‘add’ and ‘subtract.’
Daniel’s piano teacher [rhetorically]: Do you know where John Philip Sousa was born?
Daniel: Australia?
Piano teacher: Do you care for Christmas music?
Daniel: No.
Lesli: Daniel, you like Christmas music, don’t you?
Daniel: Yes. [pause] I thought ‘do you care’ was like ‘do you mind.’
Daniel: Mommy, does the counselor rule the principal or does the principal rule the counselor?
Lesli: The principal rules the counselor. Why?
Daniel: I just was wondering.
Daniel [responding to a headline about ‘Robots in the Classroom’]: You can’t use robots in a classroom. They would crush all the desks with their feet. Unless they were tiny robots.
Daniel: When are you going to be done with your homework?
Doug: It’ll be a while.
Daniel: How long is a while?
Doug: Probably about a week.
Daniel: I’ve seen a while before, and it didn’t take a week.
Teaching Moments
Daniel: Mom, when is children’s day?
Lesli: There isn’t one.
Daniel [indignant]: Then why do they have a Mother’s and a Father’s day?!
Doug to Daniel: I know the bushel of perfectly ripe peaches looks soft and inviting, but next time, please don't sit in them.
Lesli: If you eat three carrots you can have chocolate milk.
Daniel: I want lettuce instead.
Lesli: We don’t have any lettuce.
Daniel [sitting down and throwing the carrots—whining] I want lettuce!
Lesli: Just eat them or you won’t get your chocolate milk.
Daniel: Can I cry while I eat them?
[By Daniel] Today my Mom was buying a lot of swords [online] and she said, “Poppy’s going to kill me,” and I said, “With one of those?”
Doug: I think at a Summers get-together there should not be any weapons. Just on general principle.
Life
Daniel: This is boring.
Sandi: My bed is boring?
Daniel: No.
Sandi: My room is boring?
Daniel: No. My life is boring.
Daniel: Do you know what they should make?
Lesli: What?
Daniel: A fruit roll up as long as the United States.
Lesli: Why?
Daniel: Because then when they rolled it out, people could munch on it.
Lesli [filing papers]: What is this folder? This is all random crap.
Doug: It’s a folder of random crap. My whole life should be in this folder.
Computers
[Doug] I told Daniel I was writing a book about the invention of computers, and what people did in the old days before there were computers. (Machinamenta: the Thousand-Year Quest to Build a Creative Machine) He offered his own take on the subject:
In the old days, people thought there were dragons and monsters. They didn’t have electricity in the old days, so they had to use candles. They walked everywhere (not all the time). They can ride on any animal that doesn’t care if you can ride on. There weren’t any tiles like our house is made of so they were all made of bricks or stones. Add some wires and some screws and a couple of glue to make a computer. Only robot computers can think, which is actually their brain. Space is a scientific thing. People think there are aliens in space, and some people don’t. Aliens are kind of weird and not like humans. They live on different planets. They use alien spaceships. Some people think aliens are bad guys.
-end-
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