Kids say the darndest things

lol - present company excepted (sorry, N)!

"What's a good present for adults? Batteries?"

well

I mean, yeah

it’s not NOT true

On hearing Devo's "Whip It" in the car.

"This is like a song they would sing in a musical when they're getting ready to go fight a giant crocodile."

haha

when a problem comes along
you must whip it
when a croc threatens your flock
You must whip it

"What do you want to wear to your recital?"

10yo: "A button that says 'It's piano time, bitches'"

omg

hell yes

The 19-year-old son of a friend of mine, who is struggling a little in his freshman year, told his parents, “You should have pushed me harder.”

"What do you want to wear to your recital?"

10yo: "A button that says 'It's piano time, bitches'"

― Hans Holbein (Chinchilla Volapük), Saturday, December 2, 2023 1:42 AM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Would wear this button.

2 things that don't really belong here but I have to share. First, last night 2 hours after bedtime Opal comes out of her room, sits down on the couch and says what sounds to me like "the cold and the mouse cages" or something. I ask her again what she said and she says the same thing. I ask her if she's cold and she nods no. She just sits there staring into space and says that a few more times. My wife comes out halfway through and doesn't get anything else, then she says "do you want me to come help you get back to sleep?" to which opal nods and my wife carries her back in and that's it. This morning she denies it ever happening. Mostly weird because like her mother, she never remembers her dreams and never has nightmares, except the one time where she had a nightmare and I asked if it was because I had been reading her a lot of greek mythology stuff (which she's obsessed with) and she said "no" and I said what was the nightmare about and she said "a woman's head with snakes for hair chasing her".

What I really want to share is her poetry. She just started within the last few months, sometimes writing with a classmate. She got really into it and made a petition to have her class have a poetry program. There were a few a few weeks ago that were so so good that I was gonna share but then I felt like she wouldn't want me to and it just seemed like so much "oh look how clever my child is" bragging so I didn't. But then yesterday she wrote this and I was in tears it's so fucking good. We read a lot of Dr. Seuss and Shel Silverstein and I think that's had some impact.

She'll be 7 in march. Here's her latest, I fixed a few misspellings:

I am wandering and pondering
the questions of the world

Is earth flat or is it curled?

Why does goofy talk but pluto doesn't?

I thought it was that way
but maybe it wasn't.

So next time you're wandering and pondering
just think which way?

And soon it will start to sculpt that old clay

whoa, that's really good

Thanks. This is the best of her last batch:

Poems are magical fantastical things
They can seem to be sharp or seem to have wings
Sharp harp notes to make a song
Come on come on come dance along!

I seriously can't comprehend how good these are. Saying poems are things, that they can be sharp, then saying sharp harp notes. Like does she register "sharp" notes as in the scale as opposed to just sharp as in piercing? I don't know but I do know I couldn't come up with something like this in a million years and we're very proud of her.

These are sooo goood

dan there's a really good telling of the Greek myths suitable for kids that has this neat framing device of a storyteller who's travelling to a storytelling competition, and the stories are all as if he's telling them to people he meets along the way. I'm on a train but I'll try to find it when I get home. The language is really nice and the stories are a good length. Ah hang on I found it - Atticus the Storyteller's 100 Greek Myths - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/337789.Atticus_the_Storyteller

Cool, will check it out. She has a book or two on greek myths, but most of her knowledge comes from repeated listening to the podcast Greeking Out. She still agrees that she's not quite ready for the Percy Jackson books, which people tend to recommend for age 8 or so.

Those poems are both amazing!!!

My daughter now 11 burned through many Percy Jackson books a few years ago. I read the first one aloud with her and wasn’t impressed. I found both the writing and the character depth to be a cut below most of the oodles of other kids’ fantasy series we’ve read. I imagine as you get deeper into it you get invested, it’s a pretty big extended universe, but I would agree that 7 is young. They’re violent.

yeah. the writer has a "presents" series of other mythological stories and one sounded good and was supposed to be ok for younger, called Race to the Sun. It was actually pretty violent and scary at times but she was never bothered by it.

"Why does goofy talk but pluto doesn't?" made my brain explode, I love that so so much. Very New York school, which obv makes sense ;-)

awesome poems!

tired kid got in a shit tonight about having to turn his light out before finishing his book.
after about 10 minutes in bed he came down to where we were watching TV and said "I'm going to say ten words including these ones. Sorry." then disappeared to bed again.

That's brilliant.

whoa!

5yo

"don't think about telling mom i went in the store without a coat"
" ... "

"YOU'RE THINKING ABOUT IT"

Opal wrote and drew a valentines day car, with an image of a Dachshund. It says "We Be-long together".

When she recites it she puts a lot of emphasis on LONG. Then says "get it?"

Then she asked me what melancholy meant after it was mentioned in Through the Looking Glass which I'm reading to her every night. After explaining it (more or less) she said I can remember that because watermelon is great and cauliflower isn't and if you put them together it's gross and that would make me sad.

Then she came up with an as-yet drawn valentine card that would be a drawing of a slice of watermelon saying "I would be MELON-choly without you"

Emphasis on MELON obviously.

I told her we should go into business making cards and I suddenly regret selling all of my letterpress equipment.

aw

melon cauli is an awesome concept

My younger kid asked the question every parent dreads:

“Daddy, why did they take the ‘HBO’ out of HBO Max?”

Time for the talk

A question a child might ask, but not a childish question

Today she asked my wife — “Mommy, what is ‘Robert Lowe’ famous for?”

My older kid asked me what a “mosh pit” is, which I thought was pretty funny.

it’s like a ball pit made of people

Absolutely full of germs.

“Why do psychopaths have such a bad reputation?”

Lol, is that promoted by the press campaign around this book (and perhaps this very interview)?

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/02/25/magazine/patric-gagne-interview.html

lol

wow, some very sophisticated abstract wordplay by Opal

She hasn't stopped. She keeps writing poems. She wrote one for school that said "inspired by Dr Seuss" and is like "I do like tacos on a boat..."

My wife is having her book launch party at NY bookstore P&T Knitwear and apparently Opal is going to read the above poem about poems. I think it's likely she'll freeze and back out but we'll have to see.

my 9 year old son is really into sports leagues and stuff. whenever he does 'creative' projects it's making tournament brackets or organizing teams into divisions and stuff like that. we have this little baseball game and he wants to make a tournament to replicate the actual MLB playoffs. he also uses his little Chromebook for this stuff (there are online scoreboard apps and such). anyway recently he stumbled upon some website which sells software used for scheduling for businesses, which has a promo image that looks a bit like a baseball schedule. apparently he input his email address into the "find out more!" box (Chromebooks accounts have to have a gmail address) and now a sales rep is contacting him. he is writing back telling him about his baseball league using all these long run-on sentences, as kids do. but this dude keeps responding to him. he even knows his name - Andy. he got home from school yesterday and had to check if Andy wrote back to him. I wonder if this guy thinks he's talking to a kid or an elderly person. either way my son thinks he made a new friend!

amazing

Opal's latest poem, a birthday card for her best friend Peter, who's birthday is the day after hers...

"When I'm in need your always there. Your always kind and you always share.
You have lots of trick up your sleeves.
We work together just like branches and leavs.
When we are together we are one of a kind, no catagory.
When we are together we have a crown of glory!
This is the end of this poem, but before we drop the curtan,
When we are together, nothings for certain!
It's the end but still the start.
I want you to know your always part of my heart."

omg these last 2 posts are both amazing ♥️♥️♥️♥️

Opal rules at poetry!

book deal pls stat

last night during dinner Opal was talking about what our lives must've been like before we were born and she said "You spend all your time sitting on the couch reading a book called 'The Meaning of the Word Sad'" and after we cracked up at that she said "and a book called 'I'm Blue, What Should I Do?"

my kid's been into video games since he was 5 (thank you pandemic) but he's getting to the point where he wants to go beyond Mario stuff. the kids in his class are really into Fortnite and Minecraft and I don't really want him to be into that sort of stuff just yet. he does love sports though and gets really excited about sports arcade games so I was telling him about Madden. and he nodded his head and said "oh so it's like Linebacker Alley 2!!"

"You spend all your time sitting on the couch reading a book called 'The Meaning of the Word Sad'"

this is amazing and hilarious

9yo has 'opened a detective agency' for any mysteries I may have.
He said 'You don't have to pay me anything for detective work, just be nice to me. To me, that's worth about £1.50'