MOM ACCORDIONS ARE MADE OF BEES

May 1, 2020 7:49 PM

Every night, Kate Bowler tucks her six-year-old son into bed. And, every night, he asks her questions to try to keep her from leaving. Questions like, "Have you ever eaten pumpkin seeds?" or "Are raccoons awake right now?" or "Do you know anyone with one eye?" or "MOM. IS GOOGLE A PERSON?" or....
posted by JHarris (30 comments total)

I know plenty of people with one eye. Most of them have another eye, too, but still.
posted by spacewrench at 7:52 PM on May 1, 2020 [23 favorites]

Can confirm, this is exactly what having a six-year-old is like. You miss it once it's gone.
posted by rikschell at 8:16 PM on May 1, 2020 [13 favorites]

These make me think of my brother, who was more straight-forward with his questions as a kid. For a while he had a few simple requests: some more water now, and can we have pancakes tomorrow.

And at some point he wanted gum and cakes for his birthday. Which family friends delivered.

These are wonderful. I think I shouldn't tell them to my kids, or they might imitate this behavior. Kids are the best kinds of weird.
posted by filthy light thief at 8:22 PM on May 1, 2020 [1 favorite]

Yep, my kid turned into Captain Dialogue at bedtime. When he was little, when I'd really reached my Absolute Limit, I just started answering every query or comment with "I love you." Just whatever nonsense came out of his mouth, my only response was "I love you" in a sort of singsong. He'll tease me about that now -- now that he's 17 -- whenever I ask him some question he doesn't want to answer. "I love you," he'll croon in avoidance. It's okay.

And the cool thing is, if you listen to all their crazy questions and make attempts to answer and show them that you really do want to hear all their crazy questions (up until it really is Time to Go to Sleep), there's a way to keep this bedtime dialogue going -- to a reasonable level -- so that when they're teenagers (and even if they're boys!), they'll tell you all the really really important stuff at bedtime. It's so valuable. Mine is 17 -- 17! -- and all of the important stuff comes out at bedtime.
posted by BlahLaLa at 8:28 PM on May 1, 2020 [41 favorites]

I'm wondering what communication they're feeding into that child to result in getting that stuff back out.
posted by amtho at 8:53 PM on May 1, 2020 [2 favorites]

I know plenty of people with one eye. Most of them have another eye, too, but still.

My dad, ever the mathematician, would point out that the median number of eyes people have is <2.

My mom, more anecdotal, occasionally observed that she had three classmates in high school, each of whom had a glass eye (I think two had lost eyes to accidents and a third to retinoblastoma.) The three used to socialize together and it was a common thing that they (or another classmate present) would make a wager in a bar: “Hey, I’ll bet you I can find three guys with glass eyes in this room.”
posted by ricochet biscuit at 9:52 PM on May 1, 2020 [7 favorites]

Yes, exactly this! I had a Twitter account for my son - from about 8 - 11 - with the questions he asked: @joshquestions
posted by maupuia at 10:26 PM on May 1, 2020 [4 favorites]

MOM COME BACK WHY ARE THEY LYING? ARE THEY LYING ABOUT THE BOOKS OR WHAT?!?

Kid, I’d tell you about Administration and Budgetary Cycles, but I want you to be able to sleep.
posted by GenjiandProust at 11:56 PM on May 1, 2020 [3 favorites]

At first, this sounded like DFM500,Jr. (who once told me he couldn't sleep because his toenails were growing), and then it hit me...

This child is Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes fame.
posted by dfm500 at 12:00 AM on May 2, 2020 [7 favorites]

I feel terrible because I don't actually know the difference between an ogre and a troll. I'm going to have to look it up...
posted by acidnova at 12:12 AM on May 2, 2020 [1 favorite]

My youngest daughter asked me a question once, and I didn't know the answer. She said, "You should ask Bob." I asked, who is Bob? It took awhile, but it ended up she was talking about a Google search.

So, the mystery was why she called it Bob. The answer seemed to be that she was referring to the referee in Mario Kart that sits in the cloud (his name is Lakitu). We called him Bob, and because he was the one who would rescue you if you fell off the track, my daughter associated him with a somewhat all-powerful/all-knowing presence in the game. So it made sense to her that Google was actually Bob, because it knows everything.
posted by SpacemanStix at 12:49 AM on May 2, 2020 [21 favorites]

would make a wager in a bar: “Hey, I’ll bet you I can find three guys with glass eyes in this room.”

Three guys with glass eyes walk into a bar. Because they thought it was farther away.
posted by condour75 at 1:45 AM on May 2, 2020 [10 favorites]

My dad, ever the mathematician, would point out that the median number of eyes people have is 2

Unless you lived somewhere where half or fewer of the people had two eyes, he meant (and I hope actually said) “mean” or “average”, not “median”!
posted by nicwolff at 2:39 AM on May 2, 2020 [8 favorites]

My daughter also once announced that she picked me to be her mother. Now I’m beginning to wonder if this is really how it works.
posted by waving at 3:46 AM on May 2, 2020 [4 favorites]

What's the name of his other eye???

(Spoiler alert: It's Bob.)
posted by basalganglia at 3:58 AM on May 2, 2020

My kid and I have a recurring stalling game where she continues to ask me "but why?" until we end up at the Big Bang, many universes theorem, and the anthropic principle.
posted by benzenedream at 7:15 AM on May 2, 2020 [7 favorites]

Unless you lived somewhere where half or fewer of the people had two eyes, he meant (and I hope actually said) “mean” or “average”, not “median”!

Indeed: median. I realized belatedly that I am so used to hearing people (including myself) say "average" when they mean "median" that I overcorrected.

I am reminded that I have read the proverb, "In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king," in both French and Russian: "aux royaume des aveugles, led borgnes sont rois" and -- sorry, no Cyrillic on this machine -- "v mir' slepikh, adnoglasy karoly." I was struck that both French and Russian have specific words for "one-eyed person." Russian's is of course just "one-eyed" but I cannot explain the French word.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 7:35 AM on May 2, 2020 [4 favorites]

My dad, ever the mathematician, would point out that the median number of eyes people have is [less than] 2

My niece is a professional dancer, and has to provide a short bio for the programs.
I suggested "... has more than the average number of arms"

(That's floating point average. 1.999)
posted by StickyCarpet at 8:28 AM on May 2, 2020 [7 favorites]

"In 2019, there was an average of 1.93 children under 18 per family in the United States..."
posted by StickyCarpet at 8:39 AM on May 2, 2020 [1 favorite]

My son was like this from about 3 to about 6. We usually called these "Google questions" and usually involving how big, how tall, how round something might be but more often than not they were like zen koans. Highlight: "does a sparrow know that it is a sparrow?" They could be pretty tough to answer in a way that a little kid could understand. I think it largely came from the fact that we never talked down to him and treated all questions with respect.
posted by Ashwagandha at 8:40 AM on May 2, 2020 [4 favorites]

I recall my cousin in this age range: once we we were at the beach with my mom and we noticed far out on the lake, a couple of speedboats racing. My mom imparted the knowledge that the spray of water arcing up behind a speedboat is known as a rooster tail.

Later that day, we were heading out to dinner with my aunt (mother to my cousin) who had not been to the beach but had worked that day. My cousin addressed a question to my mother out of the blue: "How big is a rooster tail?"

My mom responded, "It depends on how fast you are going." My aunt, not having been privy to the discussion earlier that day, was bewildered by the non sequitur question and equally nonsensical answer, and even more so by how all parties accepted it as satisfactory.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 10:09 AM on May 2, 2020 [19 favorites]

Oh man, this used to happen so much in our house that we coined a word for it.
posted by selfmedicating at 10:27 AM on May 2, 2020 [2 favorites]

My dad, ever the mathematician, would point out that the median number of eyes people have is 2

And the average (median? mean? 5th grade was long ago) number of skeletons people have is >1 (because some people are pregnant)

You're welcome.
posted by ananci at 2:30 PM on May 2, 2020 [5 favorites]

"Are raccoons awake right now?"

WE RULE THE NIGHT

er, they rule the night

nope, no raccoons on the blue, typing messages with their clever, clever paws

#RaccoonFilter
posted by Halloween Jack at 5:08 PM on May 2, 2020 [4 favorites]

Raccoons are always awake right now.
posted by Windopaene at 8:01 PM on May 2, 2020 [2 favorites]

I read these bedtime questions to my Calvin and Hobbes-obsessed 7-year-old son, and he laughed so hard he couldn’t talk. He usually attempts to stall my exit at bedtime by asking me questions about geography or trying to impart the most critical Mario Kart trivia of the day into my tired brain. When that doesn’t work, he’ll mournfully state “I am an un-hugged child” until I go back and give him one last bedtime hug.
posted by Maarika at 12:44 PM on May 3, 2020 [3 favorites]

Tonight’s bedtime question at our house was, “Is it a bad idea to hide from a tornado in a cardboard box?”
posted by Maarika at 6:25 PM on May 3, 2020 [2 favorites]

Raccoons are always awake right now.

This (in Latin) is on Toronto’s coat of arms.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 4:46 AM on May 4, 2020 [1 favorite]

ACCORDIONS ARE MADE OF BEES

Who am I to disagree?
posted by hanov3r at 9:05 AM on May 4, 2020 [2 favorites]

My kid and I have a recurring stalling game where she continues to ask me "but why?" until we end up at the Big Bang, many universes theorem, and the anthropic principle.

This was a bit in one of Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars books, I'm going to say Blue Mars but it might not be. One of the characters had to teach children every once in a while and he was a terrible teacher. But if the kids could get him into answering "but why" questions he'd teach them things until they ended up at the Big Bang, which all of the kids would should out in unison.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 3:51 PM on May 4, 2020 [2 favorites]