Little Brother (inspecting his T-shirt): 
“Do you think I can still wear this shirt today, even though I spilled Leaky Egg* on it?”
Me: “How about you get a wet paper towel and wipe it up and see how it looks when it dries?”
LB: “Well, I already licked it off, so…”
(*Translation: a Leaky Egg is an egg over easy. Yes, I know all about salmonella danger. We live on the edge over here.)
The only saving grace here is that the egg seems to have spilled on the bright yellow letters…
I’ve been substitute teaching a lot recently, and sometimes the things the kids say are nothing short of priceless. Here are a few samples I managed to scribble down:
7th-grader, upon hearing that we’d be eating lunch in the classroom because the cafegymatorium was set up for a graduation reception: “Can we order some ribs?”
Me: “Tie your shoes.”
3rd-grader: “They came untied yesterday.”
3rd-grader: “This is my folder. It’s blue. It’s my new favorite color.”
Me: “Blue is a great color! What was your favorite color before?”
3rd-grader: “Well, I made something with my buddy…”
Actual 1st-grader-composed spelling sentence: “If you took my pencil, I would tell on you.”
Actual 7th-grade religion test answers:
Things Teachers Say:
Little Brother almost always eats the same breakfast: an everything bagel with butter and two scrambled eggs.
This morning he was looking for something different.
“I got some chocolate-chip Eggo waffles at the store,” I said.
We checked the label. Two waffles have 31 carbs. Four waffles have 62, which is almost exactly the same as his bagel-and-eggs combo.
“I’ll have four waffles,” he decided.
I asked him if he wanted any eggs, reminding him that without them, he might find himself hungry later this morning.
“There’s protein in the waffles,” he said. “It comes from the chocolate chips.”
Little Brother is rehearsing for another show: this time it’s the Christmas play at the community theater. He’s playing Charlie Bradley in The Best Christmas Pageant Ever.
Last night he found out what he has to bring for his costume:
I told him that he needed to check with the director about the church clothes. Normally he wears a golf shirt and khakis to church (then tops it off with his altar-server robe.) I mentioned that the director might have had a button-down shirt in mind when she requested he bring church clothes.
He replied, “If I have to wear a tuxedo, I’m going to flip out.”
I’m cooking pot roast for dinner, so there’s a bag of onions on the table. I’ve been trying this unique storage method for onions and garlic–so far so good. I keep the onions and garlic in paper bags in a hanging wire basket in the basement; holes punched in the bags allow air to circulate.
So Little Brother wants to know why there’s a bag with holes in it on the table.
“It’s for the onions. They need to breathe.”
“Onions aren’t alive. Dead things don’t breathe.”
“Right. Well, the air needs to get around them so they don’t rot.”
“Does it work?”
“I think so.”
“Oh! They should put holes like that in coffins, then, so dead people wouldn’t rot.”
“They’d rot anyway.”
“Why?”
At this point I’ve had about all I can take of this strange conversation. “Because they’re not onions!”
We went out to dinner tonight to celebrate TheDad’s birthday. At his choice of restaurant, many walls were decorated with Old West portraits–except for the ones by the bar, which held large TVs featuring SEC football.
Middle Sister mused aloud about whether, in 150 years, our portraits would be hanging on some restaurant wall somewhere. “Would we even know? I wonder if those people know we’re looking at their pictures right now.”
I didn’t think that we’d know about it if this happened. “How would we be able to keep track of all the places where our digital images wind up?”
Little Brother disagreed. “We’d know about it in heaven!”
“How?”
“God has excellent eyes!”
Last week at the writing conference I had the privilege to listen to a presentation by Randy Hain on integrating faith and work. Since most of the writing I do is for secular venues, this topic was particularly interesting to me.
I wanted to learn more so I purchased his book The Catholic Briefcase: Tools for Integrating Faith and Work. My original purpose was to learn better time-management skills, but the other topics covered in this book are just as important.
Today, as I approached the Chick-Fil-A drive-through with Little Brother and his friend in the car, I was reminded that some things are easier for kids than they are for grownups. Kids who are raised in the Faith have no problem integrating faith and life. It’s just what they do.
Here’s what happened: Little Brother’s friend wanted to order a mint milkshake, and I had to tell him that mint was not available because it’s a seasonal flavor.
He replied, “Oh, yeah! It’s Ordinary Time now.”
“Amen I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 18: 3-4)
While putting food on his plate at dinnertime tonight (we eat buffet style), Little Brother dropped a piece of chicken on his foot.
Fortunately, he was wearing socks and I was able to remove the chicken before the sauce soaked through the sock and burned his toes.
He ran upstairs for fresh socks as the rest of us sat down to eat. Returning to the table, he remarked, “It’s a good thing I didn’t get food on both my socks. I had this other sock in my drawer, and it’s the same as the socks I was already wearing, but I couldn’t find the wife…”
The other day Little Brother opened a Fanta, and I made the mistake of informing him that Fanta is Pope Benedict’s favorite soda.
I also made the mistake of mentioning that Pope Benedict is called “Pope Emeritus” now that he’s retired. Now he’s fascinated by the term “emeritus,” which he somehow thinks is a term that can only be applied to popes.*
He has just declared that he wants to be a professional soccer player (we knew that) and when he’s a soccer player emeritus, he’ll star in commercials.
Aspirations to the papacy have also been mentioned. I guess that’s for when he’s too old for soccer and the commercials deals run out. “I’m not going to be a pope, because there’s only one, Mom. Get your facts straight.”
That’s a lot of ambition right there. However, his hopes of playing on a national soccer team outside the USA have been dashed by the cold, hard facts: both TheDad and I were born in New Jersey. We’re not immigrants. “I was kinda hoping Dad was born in Poland….are you sure?”
How does he even know the eligibility rules for national soccer teams?
*See the beauty of Kid Logic? Adults had no idea, before this past February, that “emeritus” could be associated with a pope. Kids, though, just take such things in stride.
Little Brother is a soccer fan. This morning he announced, “Mom, the World Cup is going to be in Brazil next year! Can I go?”
Denied.
I thought his request was funny, so I was telling Middle Sister about it. She replied, “I’d love to go! I’d bring my friend. She speaks Portuguese. And I’ll learn how to ask where the bathroom is. I’m pretty sure it’s almost just like Spanish.”
“Right. The last thing I’m going to do is send the two of you and one other teenager to Brazil.”
Little Brother, for whom Hope Springs Eternal, had a plan. “Wait! Aren’t you and Dad going to celebrate your 25th anniversary soon?”
“No. It’ll be 23 in January.”
“Oh. Well, I have an idea! You and Dad can go to Brazil on your honeymoon!”
“And I’m guessing that you and Middle Sister would be the chaperones?”
“Well, no. We would go to the soccer game, and you and Dad can go visit that big Jesus on the mountain. I thought of everything! It’s a great plan! What could possibly go wrong?”