Kids say the darndest things

that is really cute and clever and darling

My 7yo went on and on praising Lee Harvey Oswald's marksmanship-- "He was a very good shot. You can't take that away from him."

That is exactly the right response! 🤣

a future @dril on our hands

LOL'ing

Opal has never heard a Weird Al song but it's come up once or twice, where I've explained how he sang "eat it" or whatever. I guess it's one of those things that stuck with her because this morning we were talking about Ain't No Stopping Us Now, which is what her school plays as all the kids come out for pick-up (which is insanely cute), and I referred to it as the pick-up song and said "I thought you said hiccup song" and I said no and she said "that's what Weird Al would sing, he'd call it the hiccup song".

Just kinda cracked me up that she'd think about that. I guess I should probably play her some Weird Al. But I guess I have to play her the original songs too.

Aw man, that's so cute.

My youngest is 11. He's at the age where he's more or less self-sufficient and has developed a sense of modesty. However, I occasionally give him a hand with washing his hair because it starts to smell like wet dog. Last night, as I was rubbing shampoo into his scalp, he said, "You don't have to be so damn aggressive."

oh man, the "wet dog" smell – can totally relate.

This isn't really a "darndest thing"; but last week, I told my son he could open an Incognito tab in Chrome, for a coding project he was working on (something about being able to have two accounts open at once, without being logged in on one of them). I told him, straight up – "Please don't use Incognito mode without asking us; we need to know what you're doing online." (I figure if he knows about Incognito mode, may as well be straight about it and have to rely on trust.)

Later, he asked, "Why would someone use Incognito mode, anyway?" I was like, "Uh... for example, if you share a computer with someone and you're shopping for a gift, and don't want them to see." He said, "But that's the only reason, right?" I told him sometimes ppl just don't want cookies on their computer, etc.

To cheat at Wordle

At preschool pickup this week, a classmate of our daughter walked by, and our daughter said:

“Well, she’s living her best life!”

(she sometimes picks up phrases like that without quite knowing what they mean)

We were driving into bright sunshine this morning and the eldest one said "Ah. The sun. My beloathed."

goth?

That's amazing.

Local news was on the TV, due to fires nearby (we don't normally have the news on). My kid:

"Why is he standing in front of a fire, and talking to the camera?"
– It's the news, he's reporting from the scene.
"Isn't that breaking the fourth wall?"

Sometimes they do the darnedest things: apparently a 2nd grader at my kid's school took $1400 from his grandmother's purse and passed it all out to his classmates yesterday.

Grandma's just holding $1400 in cash?

showing me a lego house she built and describing the owner of the house:

"She's allergic to white whipped cream so she takes blue whipped cream instead and she believes in magical creatures"

7 year old: "Dad, one of the sentences in my homework isn't age-appropriate."

"What does it say?"

"'The young couple looked for apples.'"

"Why is that inappropriate?"

"Do you know what it means?"

"I think I do?"

"What?"

"Well, I know what 'young' means, and I know what 'couple' means..."

"Yeah that's not appropriate. What does that mean?"

"Maybe it's two 25 year-olds who just got married.""

"No. No. 25 is not young. A young couple is not age-appropriate."

I remember how my daughter, upon hearing the term "young adult" asked how you can be both young and an adult.

5 year old Opal is obsessed with Greek Mythology. Listening to a podcast called "Greeking Out".

I don't remember how it came up, I think we were talking about constellations but I said "when I die will you send me up to the starts to become a constellation?"

she said "no dad, i can't do that, I'm not Zeus!"

I said oh ok. Then she said "but I can dig a grave for you, I'd do that for you"

I said thank you, that's very nice, assuming I want to be buried. You know a lot of people get cremated, and then their family can sprinkle their ashes somewhere important to them, like their favorite spot in the woods or by the ocean.

She said "I can do that for you" and I said "where would you sprinkle my ashes" and she said "in my room! So you can be with me forever!"

xxp I was predicting there was going to be some hip modern sexual slang meaning of "apples"

Lol yeah, my first thought was that he was making some sort of Adam and Eve connection.

xp I'm fascinated with the way kids react to the idea of death; my older one never wanted to talk about it (and still doesn't) after asking a few heartbreaking questions about it when he first started to get a sense of what is was (when a spider gets eaten by a bird can it still make webs? do even *pet* dogs and fish die?); my younger one is totally matter-of-fact about it except that he'll rarely use the word "die," preferring "destroyed" instead for some reason. Once he asked me how farmers are able to turn a cow into steak before the cow realizes what's going on and it kind of made me want to go vegetarian again.

my son (7) is learning about it too. I think someone (maybe me!) told him that people die when they hit 100 so now every birthday he tells the person when they are going to die. My grandma just hit 92 and his reaction was "wow! she's going to die soon!"

Yes! My kid thought that too. He had a period of wanting to find out everyone's ages and then telling everyone who would die soonest.

xxp he also asked 'how do they turn water fish into eating fish?' after watching a programme about how they make fishfingers.

Not mine, but too good not to share —

A friend told us today about having the sex talk with her son recently; when she told him it’s a private, personal thing between two people, he said:

“Yeah, I know… the doctor leaves the room while they do it.”

when i was a kid i totally thought grownups went to the hospital or a special place to have sex. i mean if babies were born there, in this like, controlled setting, then it stood to reason that you’d want to start the process there too

xp ha, that's great!

https://aeon.co/essays/how-to-do-philosophy-for-and-with-children

Kid: "Remember last year, when I played baseball, and had two strikes and three balls?"
Me: Yeah.
Kid: "That's kind of unnatural, right? To have three balls?"
Me: ...... that was actually kind of funny. Did you make it up yourself?
Kid: (with a proud grin) "Yes!"

literally everything in the world according to my 13yo is either “sus” or “brazy”, nothing inbetween

felt old, looked up brazy in urban dictionary: "a step above redonkulous"

turns out i am cooler than tracer's 13-yr-old kid after all

“sus” or “brazy”, nothing inbetween

the new C or D

but which is which? sus used to be suspicious i.e. bad, is it still? or is it now bad meaning good? or something else?

not gnna fess up to how long i scrolled thru the among us memes to find a good response to this question

Someone just ordered a Chinese Chicken Salad; my kid asked, “What’s the difference between one of our chickens and a chicken raised in China?”

Isn’t Brazy Blood-speak?

probably - he is obsessed with 90s rap and gangster culture

(while playing giant jenga)

I just danced in fear like my husband was going to die that very minute!

watching a silent movie

daughter: Why isn't there any talking in this movie?
Me: Because this is a really old movie
daughter: People didn't know how to talk then?

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/07/e0/19/07e0199b9ccc36436de3b1d38e8f045d.jpg

lol i was picturing that Calvin & Hobbes too!!

yeah, after the fact it occurred to me that I could have done a whole bit similar to that Calvin & Hobbes strip

love this email I got from summer camp about my son:

"He mentioned that he saw a cloaked figure in the Camp space which then disappeared. I told him that the stories need to stop, but he mentioned that they were true."

lol the word "mentioned" is doing a lot of work in that sentence to maintain the facade of casualness. as someone who has spent a lot of summers working at camps, i am very familiar with the delicate dance of trying to communicate with parents in a low key way about things for which children are the ones establishing the level of drama and intensity

randomly overheard as my daughters were playing together:

"I found your baby! It was under some other babies!"

"Well making gelatin shouldn't hurt the pigs because their hooves are made of solid wood" - opal age 5 1/2

no idea where she got that idea from.