Wednesday, June 29, 2005
I didn't know that
Max initiates many of our conversations these days with the opening line, "Mommy, did you know that...yada yada yada?" Usually, he's relaying some obscure fact about the animal kingdom. "Mommy, did you know that camels and moose can close their nostrils?" "Mommy, did you know that tigers have muscles in their ears?" "Mommy, did you know that a kinkajou can hang upside down by its tail and eat a banana at the same time?" That was the question Max posed from the doorway of our room tonight after he'd been stalling bedtime for nearly two hours. I didn't even know that there was an animal called a kinkajou, let alone that it possessed such extraordinary talents. "Do you know what pre-ten-smile means, mommy?" He sounded out the word carefully, molding the unfamiliar syllables into a form he understood. "Pretensmile?" "Yes. It means grabbing something." Max flexed his hand several times. "Like monkeys use their pre-ten-smile hands for climbing." To illustrate, Max grabbed one of the bedposts and climbed onto our bed. "Max, I think you mean prehensile. Monkeys have prehensile hands, just like we do." "That's it!," Max replied. "And kinkajous have prehensile tails, too." In my vicarious journey through childhood, I can tell I'm going learn a multitude of things that I missed on the first pass.
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