And now, a moment of terror brought to you by Sophie:
Sophie: There’s a butt on Mommy’s head and Daddy’s head! Run for your lives! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!
(30 seconds of complete silence)
Sophie: (deadpan) That was a close one.
It was like War of the Worlds for the modern era.
When we warned Sophie of her impending bath yesterday, she naturally protested. Hoping to remind her that clean and conditioned hair is less tangled than dirty hair, this is the debate that ensued:
Sophie: (adamantly) I don’t want to take a bath!
Mommy: Do you want it to owie when I brush your hair tomorrow?
Sophie: (perfect deadpan) Yes. I love owies.
(long pause while Mommy and I laugh uproariously)
Sophie: Well… maybe not…
It’s really difficult to compete logically with a four-year-old child who understands the power of sarcasm.
Only a child can instill a true feeling of unconditional love. I had this conversation with Sophie when we woke up this morning:
Sophie: Don’t look at me!
Me: Why not?
Sophie: Because I don’t love you a lot! I only love you a little bit.
At least I’m still up for consideration.
Sophie keeps a picture on her desk of me reading her a story when she was about two years old. The book featured was Nancy Hazbry’s How to Get Rid of Bad Dreams: a traumatic story offering graphic detail on a variety of bad dreams children might have, with advice on how to counter them.
For example, one page offers this sample of a delightful childhood lark:
If you dream you are being attacked by one-hundred-and-ninety-nine billion black, scary, hairy bugs with green eyes and red stingers, don’t worry.
All you have to do is…
An illustration of an enormous, hideous black ant fills the page. Fortunately, by turning the page, the reader can find the solution to such a dream:
whip out a can of silver paint and spray it all over the bugs, then take a deep breath and blow them into the sky . That will make one-hundred-and-ninety-nine billion new glittering stars.
I found it rather disconcerting, but at the time Sophie was too excited to have me reading her a story to register any of its content. Since then, the story has become legend in her world, and when I asked what story she wanted to read tonight, she announced “The Monster Book” as her preference.
Unfortunately, her collection of books is large, and The Monster Book was nowhere to be found. I offered alternatives:
Me: How about the Green Eggs and Ham book we read yesterday?
Sophie: I want The Monster Book!
Me: What about one of these new books you got for Christmas?
Sophie: I really want The Monster Book!
Me: Ooh! You have The Princess and the Frog! You loved that movie! Should we read this book?
Sophie: (fake tears pouring out) I really want The Monster Book!
We searched through her bookcase, one book at a time. She even insisted that we consult the picture of me reading it last time to be sure we’d recognize it today. About halfway through her collection, we found it.
She jumped eagerly into bed (one of the few times this has ever happened), and curled up to hear the legendary story, her level of excitement waning with each frightening new scenario.
And when I turned the last page, she sat silent for a moment. And then:
Sophie: (incredulously) Why did you read me The Monster Book? Now I’m gonna have bad dreams!
As a software developer — essentially a trained logician — I really can’t formulate a good rebuttal to that.
Sophie just discovered Enchanted, the 2007 Amy Adams movie in which a cartoon character is transported to the real world.
Her thoughts when she saw the animated princess transformed into an actress?
Mommy, you put your movie inside my movie! Now it’s a Sophie movie and a Mommy movie!
You got animation on my live action! You got live action on my animation!
I made a typo while doing some paired programming with a colleague, writing “border: 1px” where I actually meant “border: none;” I joked:
Me: (indignantly) I know the difference between one and none!
Colleague: That’s good… since that’s what binary is…
The man’s got a point…
A colleague just returned to work today after the birth of his son. He described the process of learning what different cries mean:
It’s like learning a new language while sleep deprived and while the person teaching it to you is yelling at you.
Overheard in the office:
About-to-Retire Staff Member: Are they serving alcohol?
Conversation at work today:
Colleague: I have stories to tell about Cleveland!
Me: Does it rock?
Colleague: It does not.
That about covers it.
I don’t often take cabs in Boston, but I did tonight, and en route the driver told me this story, which completely stunned me:
People used to run out of cabs without paying all the time. After ATMs showed up, that hasn’t really happened anymore. So, I have to believe all those people weren’t really dishonest; they just didn’t have the money.
Amazing! Easy access to cash solved an apparently unrelated problem of people shirking their cab payments. This is a Freakonomics moment, for sure.
He speculated further that many of the former shirkers had spent their money at bars, perhaps inadvertently, leaving them with no way home but to risk angering a cab driver.
Of course, the next logical question is how the newly mandated credit card machines in cabs will change the equation. This driver had three concerns. First, the processor takes a 6% cut. Second, it takes weeks to get the money (which is problematic when the driver has to pay cash for the cab and cash for gas). Third, people often leave before the payment clears, sometimes leaving the driver empty-handed.
This bothers me. Whereas market forces can correct the strictly financial problems — by changing rates, or forcing cab companies to negotiate more flexible terms with drivers — the social implications of a technology causing people to unintentionally abandon their debts are less easily remedied.
