Kids say the darndest things

The eeriness is in that the monster, which the scientist previously thought to be under his control, rose of its own accord in order to engage in a dance craze.

Monster Mash gets better every time I hear it

darlene love on backing tracks iirc. not her best work.

my son has changed his Apple ID username to 'rasting clart'

“Daddy, are you familiar with the show Seinfeld?”

LOL

my 8 year old loves to watch those "try not to laugh videos" on Youtube. I try to supervise it because some of those get pretty adult but we had people over today and I couldn't. anyway he comes out and asks what "deez nuts" means. that made me laugh pretty hard, which in turn inspired him to say it four dozen more times.

My kid’s been reading Tolkien, who uses the adjective “queer” a lot… the kid only knows it in the modern context, and he asked me about a section where I guess someone says, “Everyone in this town is queer”; and Bilbo goes, “But even I, myself, am queer.” My son said he was like – huh? (I couldn’t help but chuckle at his genuine misunderstanding, even tho this wouldn’t be something to remark upon otherwise)

ha that's the mirror of an unusually memorable middle-school experience caused by the exact same passage: asked by jeering classmates if i'm queer i answer earnestly "sure but everyone's queer" to great hilarity+alarm. otm tho

I'm reminded of us being read a passage from (I think?) Lion the Witch & the Wardrobe, where there was a passing comment about a "dead bluebottle on the windowsill".

I distinctly recall all us kids going "ew gross!". Becasue where I grew up, that meant a dead jellyfish on the windowsill.

"How many subscribers do you have?"

"You what's strange is that Taylor Swift has been singing for a really long time, and she's still not good at it. I thought if you practice so much at something you're supposed to get better."

she is hilarious

https://i.imgur.com/ZkS17m0.jpg

Couple of kids around 8 years old fist bumping everyone getting off the overground. Then announce triumphantly "NOW WE CAN MAKE DNA".

I went and visited my buddy to drop something off today, and his 5-year old and 7-year old were home. I hadn't seen them in a while, so daddy and Uncle Neanderthal and the two kids were having a good time being silly, and then 7-year old asks my buddy if he was alive during the Titanic sinking. so my friend, being a wiseass, says in actuality, it wasn't an iceberg that sunk the Titanic, but Godzilla, but few people knew that. and we said that Godzilla sunk the Stockton Rush submarine because they "got too close to the truth".

so both the 7-year old and 5-year old started giggling, ran with it and began spinning wild Godzilla tales, but the 7-year old busts out with Jesus coming down and fighting Godzilla, initially bodyslamming him, WWE style into the ocean, killing him. before he was mysteriously resurrected, and came back and fought Jesus again, only for God to show up and kill BOTH God and Godzilla. and then both came back to life, but according to the 7-year old, not until he took a humongous dump in the ocean.

*both Jesus and Godzilla

Happiness is submission to Godzilla

I’d watch that movie

My 6-yr-old asked why Neanderthals died out. I said, “I think they were outcompeted by humans… Humans were better at finding food.”

She said, “That’s when restaurants started, right?”

Ahem...

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?”