30. June 2008 by Ben.

Kid: “I hate college.”

Guy: “Are you gonna be a college dropout?”

Kid: (indignant) “How am I supposed to know?  I’m eleven.”

– Overheard on the Green Line

You may decide which of these movie quotes this real-life experience most resembles:

Option 1:

Guy: “What’s going on?”

Eric: “I don’t know.  But could you do us a favor and try to catch the lemur?”

Guy: “I don’t know how to catch a lemur.  I’m a dentist.”

Eric: “Well I don’t know how to catch a lemur – I’m nine!”

– Mr.  Magorium’s Wonder Emporium

Option 2:

Joey: “There’s gotta be a way that we can stop this from happening.  Ooh!  Okay, you come with me and you tell them that the house is haunted!”

Mackenzie: “What are you, eight?”

Joey: “Okay, let’s hear your great idea.”

Mackenzie: “I don’t have any great ideas.  I am eight.”

– Friends

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26. June 2008 by Ben.

In the IT front office, a woman carries on a conversation about how to choose a new password, while her small child watches.  Then, out of nowhere:

Girl, age 5: “This one time, my daddy had a hole in his pants, and I could see his underwear.”

Coworker: “And did you fix the hole?”

Girl: “Nope.  We threw out the pants and got new ones.”

Posted in Kids' Quotes | 1 Comment »

30. May 2008 by Ben.

Sophie was very excited at my arrival when I first got there.  As she walked in the door I could clearly here my name overlaid with tones of excitement.   Ben’s here!

Until she saw me.

Then she immediately ran upstairs to her room as fast as she could go and refused to come out until I was gone… which wasn’t really likely to happen.  When she did have to come downstairs (to eat, for instance), she refused to take her eyes off me, certain, I think, that if she weren’t watching me I’d immediately transform into a drooling monster and destroy her.

When I was still there the next morning, she resigned herself to being in the same room as me, though any time I went anywhere near Mommy she ran over and pushed me away, yelling, “No!  My mommy!”

By the third day, though, the tables had turned.  Anytime I went anywhere near Mommy (or anyone else) she still ran over and pushed me away… but now yelled, “No!  My Ben!”

By this afternoon I had a voice mail that said, first, “Why won’t Ben talk!” (sorry, Sophie, I wasn’t really on the phone) and “Come back!“  Hehe!  I win!  And that’s very cute.

Posted in Colorado, Kids' Quotes, Anecdotes | 1 Comment »

28. May 2008 by Ben.

Sophie came running in Wednesday morning just as I was waking up and decided it was time to become a monster – a routine activity on all lazy mornings.

She sat quietly for a long time, though, shooting me furtive quizzical glances, before eventually asking, “Ben glasses?”

“Yep. I wear glasses!”
“Where?”
“I took them off when I went to sleep.”
“No! Glasses on!”

I put my glasses back on, and she immediately proceeded to roar and attack me.

Apparently without glasses I cease to be Ben, and cannot play.

Posted in Colorado, Kids' Quotes | 1 Comment »

28. May 2008 by Ben.

We went with Sophie to play at the WOW Museum in Lafayette – a children’s museum with all sorts of educational games and activities. There’s a bank with a working pneumatic tube. There’s a platform you can stand on and pull an enormous soap bubble around your entire body.

There’s a music room and an art room, a pirate ship and a sandbox, a table full of magnets, an enormous doll house, a grocery store with a checkout lane, a railroad station, and at least a dozen other things I didn’t even get a chance to see.

At one point we played with a huge ball maze, where you drop a ball into one of many tubes on the side of a machine and wait for it to shoot out of one of the other tubes (unpredictably, to a child, at least). Sophie’s approach to this game was to grab a ball and run off to play with other exhibits while holding it.

When it was time to leave, she was quite upset, and understandably didn’t want to leave. There was lots of crying, all of which centered on the words, “My ball! I want my ball!”

She didn’t miss playing so much as she regretted having to leave behind a ball.

Posted in Colorado, Kids' Quotes | 1 Comment »

28. May 2008 by Ben.

(I got to play with Sophie, age 2, the whole time I was in Colorado. She is extremely cute, and this four part series will demonstrate that.)

While we were driving, Sophie decided it was essential that she have the umbrella that was sitting on the floor of the car, which she could of course not reach.

Sophie: “Mommy! I want that!”

The obvious “get out of jail free” answer to this request is, “Sorry, I’m driving.”

Sophie adopted an indignant expression, pointed at me in the passenger seat, and said, almost exasperatedly, “What’s that? Ben get it!”

As in, “Uhh, hello? What else is he there for? Duh!”

Sorry, Sophie. We hadn’t thought of that.

Posted in Colorado, Kids' Quotes | 3 Comments »

25. March 2008 by Ben.

Teacher: “You are supposed to be doing a packet, not dismantling your pen.”

Student: “But I’m not dismantling it – I’m taking it apart!”

Teacher: “‘Dismantling’ and ‘taking apart’ are synonyms – they mean the same thing.”

Student: “Yes, but I understand ‘taking apart.’”

– Sixth Grade Interaction

Posted in Kids' Quotes, Overheard | 1 Comment »

1. March 2008 by Ben.

Actual verbatim report (unedited and unabridged) that a sixth grader wrote documenting his misbehavior after he was sent to the office for stealing:

“The first time I stole her candy,  I gave it back.  The second time I stole her candy, I ate it.”

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