Quotes

She Came From the North

The first news of 2009: a baby girl named Sasha was born on Northwest Airlines Flight 59 from Amsterdam to Boston.  The story starts out very pleasant:

“Everybody was there to help,” said [Dr. Natarajan] Raman, who helped deliver the child.  “People offered baby food, people brought things, people vacated their seats.”

Then it throws out this whopper:

Customs officials deemed [baby] Sasha a Canadian citizen, because she was born over Canadian airspace.  The flight landed about 45 minutes after the birth.

Well that’s a doozy.  If she’d waited another 10 or 15 minutes the kid would probably have been born in the United States.  Now she’ll be the only girl in her class whose nationality depended on the Global Positioning System, a radio, and a stopwatch.  You know she’ll never live that down.

Anybody else remember the West Wing episode where Donna finds herself suddenly Canadian?

Donna:  I’m very upset. I don’t know the words to my national anthem. I’ve been throwing out Canadian pennies my whole life. I’ve been making fun of the Queen. We don’t do that.

Milk! But it Worked!

A friend of mine is studying in Italy, where (you’ll be shocked to learn) there are some cultural differences.

She just told me the story of the day she was running late to class, so she brought a modest breakfast along with her — a croissant and a small glass of milk.  This earned  her some strange stares during the lecture, and afterward a classmate approached her:

Classmate:  What were you drinking during class?

Her: Uhh… milk…

Classmate: (horrified)  Straight?!

On really rough days I take mine on the rocks with a twist.

This reminds me of my favorite scene in the musical Bye Bye Birdie, which we once performed in high school.  Young Hugo Peabody tries repeatedly to get a drink at Maude’s Roadside Retreat (where I portrayed Maude) but gets kicked out every time.  Later, he staggers out of the same bar completely drunk.  His mother is shocked:

Mrs. Macafee: Hugo Peabody, what have you been drinking?

Hugo:  Milk!  But it worked!

(For the record, I heard this story the day after seeing Sophie, who drinks over a liter of milk every day.  That just makes it funnier.)

More Convenient than Sliced Bread

Walking down the streets of Montpelier this afternoon, with Sophie carrying an umbrella (a device she loves to use even when there’s no realistic chance of rain, much less actual rain), we sloshed through some puddles of melted snow and mud.

At one point, Sophie tripped and fell, planting her hands in a particularly messy patch of mud.  Unhurt but messy, she ran to me with horror in her eyes and showed me her hands.

Ben: Ooh, yuck!  I bet Mommy has a tissue you can use to clean up.

Sophie: No!  I wanna use your pants!

I guess I can’t complain too much when I’ve been known to do the same thing.

Slippery When Wet

Sophie was very excited to go ice skating today. She first mentioned it weeks ago with high excitement and made me promise we’d go skating during our Christmas visit.

A few days later she realized she didn’t own any skates and called, greatly upset, to make me promise we’d get her some from the “store.”

This remained a major topic of conversation through this morning, when we got out to Cairns Arena in Burlington.  We rented skates, got everybody laced up, and headed to the ice.  Sophie walked with us, balancing somewhat precariously on her blades, and eagerly stepped out onto the rink, holding our hands.  Immediately, she spun around in horror and announced:

It’s slippery!

We insisted she try it anyway (despite the unexpected slipperiness), holding the wall tightly, and holding our hands, but she burst into tears, and skated with us only grudgingly.

After a while she discovered (by chance) that falling wasn’t fatal, and so made her primary purpose on the ice to fall.  Until she fell a bit too hard, and thereafter refused to set foot on the ice again, instead watching us from the sidelines.

Her summary of the event, recounted to anybody who asks anything about skating is simply:

It was slippery!  I fell on my butt.

Winning Numbers

My stocking this Christmas included some scratch-off lottery tickets.  Of course, I asked Sophie to help me scratch them off.

Each time she uncovered a number with the edge of her penny she gleefully announced what number she found.  Being three years old and being thus unable to read, she declared most of them were “eight.” I took the chance to point out the numbers’ correct names.

“That’s a five!” I’d say, after scratching off one of the “winning numbers” spaces.  When she later uncovered a second five under “your numbers,” I was able to say, “That’s another five, just like this one here.  See?  Five… five!”

Attentive readers will at this point suspect that uncovering such matching numbers would indicate a winning ticket.  I, at the time, didn’t even notice.  The only point of having two identical numbers was to show Sophie what they looked like.  Immediately after saying, “it’s just like this other five up here,” I announced to the other adults, “aww, no matches; this one’s a loser.”

They had to correct me.  And then review all the other tickets we’d done.

(It only won $2, but I could as easily have been discarding a $2,000 game in favor of a reading lesson.)

Do Two Turns, Unload, and Go to the Moon

Hulu’s currently showing Speed and Angels, a documentary about two Navy officers training to be fighter pilots.

Officer 1: What if I reverse into a T circle, get us high, and then I keep sight.

Officer 2: Probably not.  That would be a bad game plan (because of the visibility).  That’s a huge factor — obviously “lose sight, lose the fight.”  It’s the oldest lesson of dogfighting.  If I were fighting a tomcat I’d just do two turns with an F-5, get him below his vertical airspeed, and then just like unload for a half a second, and then just go to the moon, come back, and pick your reentry.

Duh.  Even I know that.

(Okay, not really.  I understood each of the individual words, but assembling them in that order really doesn’t work for me.)

God Help Us; We’re in the Hands of Engineers

Overheard on the D line yesterday evening:

It would be like Jurassic Park. I’d be suspended in Jell-o forever.

Don’t judge too quickly. With all the plot holes in that movie, we might well have overlooked eternal Jell-o suspension in there somewhere.

(I like best a scene when the power is all out so Hammond is eating all the ice cream so it won’t melt… while electric fans turn overhead.)

Best Phone Call Ever

The phone rings at 11:12.  I answer.

Me: Hello.

Sophie: I’m going to see Santa.

Me:  You’re going to see Santa again?

Sophie: Yeah!  I’m going to see Santa and get presents!

Me:  Ooooh, fun!  Did you see Santa at the parade yesterday?

Sophie: Yeah! Okay, bye!

The call disconnects.

0 minutes, 35 seconds elapsed