number 2s for everyone!
When we told our four-year-old son we were moving from California to Pennsylvania, he told everyone we were moving to a place where pencils grow on trees.
Kay Keaney
Media, PA
the famed mummified lobster roll
My ten-year-old, completing a crossword puzzle: "Are the pyramids in Maine?"
Apparently he has inherited my geographical disability.
Laura Gilliom
Durham, NC
le bark
We were adopting a dog from the local SPCA. It had been a while since I'd been to an animal shelter and I had somehow forgotten that it can be a big emotional experience. My son Charlie, then seven, talked about the shelter for days. One of his theories was that the animals in there didn't speak English (dog English or cat English) so they lost their way from their American owners. I didn't have the heart to explain all the ways that animals can wind up in the pound so I didn't exactly correct him. Until we adopted our hound mix Beatrice and Charlie started pushing for Spanish lessons.
Marie Johnson
Houston, TX
way back when
My daughter, age five, thinks that anything that didn't happened today happened "lasterday." I've tried to explain it, but she is certain I am mistaken.
Wendy Fontaine
Los Angeles, CA
lessons for the blessed mother
During Christmas, our three-year old granddaughter Ellie was looking at the manger in our home and for whatever reason, removed Mary and said "You need to go to time out." She took Mary, put her in a corner, told her to be good to the baby, counted to ten, then said. "Okay, you can go back. You be a good mother."
Gale Largey
Wellsboro, PA
you must be my lucky star
Recently, my eight-year-old daughter believed she was gazing at a shooting star, and with great concentration she started to make a wish. Before she realized the star was just an airplane, I was curious about what such an innocent child would wish for the world's future. She answered in one word: "Cake."
Vincent O'Keefe
Avon Lake, OH
the poles
When my son was four, we were reading Simms Taback's When I First Came to this Land. I told him that his great-grandfather had come to this land from Poland. He asked, "Is that where there are polar bears?" Makes perfect sense, right?
Rebecca O'Connell
Pittsburgh, PA
oh, oedipus!
My son recently told me that when he grows up, he's going to marry me. "You know," he said, "when he's out of the picture," jerking his head at his father.
Amanda Donahue
via email
like hogwarts?
Cleaning out my daughter's backpack recently, I found an in-class assignment about goal-setting and the steps you'd need to achieve that goal. Her goal was to be the President of the United States. One of the steps she planned on taking was attending President school.
Wanda Shiflett
via email
city planning
Growing up in rural Pennsylvania, I was absolutely convinced that the Monopoly board was based on a physical four-block section of New York City. I don't know how this actually could be since each square represents a street—maybe it would be four long streets that change names all the time?—but I swore to myself that someday when I grew up, I would take a stroll around the real Monopoly board. I was pretty sure that they weren't giving out two hundred bucks on the corner, though. That would just be silly.
Jennifer Rose
via email
power of deduction
I was walking to my car one afternoon when I saw two of the neighbor kids heatedly debating. One of them ran over to me and asked if Transylvania was a real place. I said that it was. He ran off to his friend, shouting, "See? I told you vampires were real!"
Mary Hester
Iowa City, IA
um … not the point
A few months ago, we had a half-hour-long family discussion as to why child laborers are not "so lucky" and that they did not spend their money buying "cool DS games and their own TVs and whatever they wanted" and that their parents actually could "tell them what to do." Jeez. Talk about a first-world family talk.
Hannah Davies
Minneapolis, MN
a gift for the great beyond
Leah was watching the funeral of Princess Diana—it was her first "experience" with a funeral. We talked about who Princess Diana was, that she lived in Great Britain, and was the Princess of Wales, etc. Leah liked the idea of how "over there, they wrap their dead people in presents." (Diana's casket was wrapped in the British flag and looked like, quite frankly, a huge-ass present!)
Julie Peters
Staunton, VA
got your penis!
Sam, butt naked, got out of the cold ocean; he looks down and says, "Nenis all gone." Pause. "Where'd nenis go?" He thought that somehow, the ocean had the ability to take away his "nenis."
Deborah Buchanan
via email
don't be so dumbledore
If you really want to start a fight, insist to my son that there is absolutely no way that the world of Harry Potter could be real. He maintains that it is possible! What, are you to say that England isn't a real place next? Jeez!
Beth Curtis
Philadelphia, PA
the believer
My son believed—or at least pretended to believe—in Santa for a very long time. Twelve years. I started to have visions of the future in which my partner and I would be breaking into his house with sacks of presents for him and his own family. ("Look! Santa brought new tires for the car!")
Marissa Thompson
New York, NY
together forever
My elementary-school-age daughter is still firmly convinced that when she grows up she's going to continue to live in our current house, with me and her father. She's the adventurous type, and I don't doubt that once she figures out she can travel for school, work, or just because, she'll be off to explore the world. In her words I see the last vestiges of her babyhood, when it was unimaginable we would be separated, and I also see the hazy vistas to which she's headed.
Elizabeth Roca
Silver Spring, MD
always a woman
My parents were big Billy Joel fans, and when I was a kid, we listened to The Stranger album a lot. There's a line in "Always a Woman," that goes, "She can't be convicted/ She's earned her degree," which led me to believe that if you earned a college degree, you could never be convicted of a crime. I still don't know what Mr. Joel means by this, but apparently that B.A. in English isn't the get-out-of-jail-free card that I once thought it was.
Jessica Howell
via email
flush with knowledge
In my family, we all actually believed that in the southern hemisphere, water would spiral counter-clockwise down the drain. When my first-grader was studying China, she offered up this bit to her teacher and was gently corrected. It wasn't until I Snopesed it that I actually believed it was an urban legend.
Danielle Summers
Leesburg, VA
Want more? Click here to have Brain, Child delivered to your door!
