Big Ugly Man Doll

The children learn many things from SOBUMD and myself, and – usually – this is a good thing.  Learning being a two-way street, we learn many things from them also.  When they were younger, many of these things involved measures of distance, measures of volume, and human orafices – stuff that I had never really wanted to know, but useful knowledge nonetheless.  (I now know how far away you might want to stand from the business end of a baby who’s eaten more mushed fruit than might have been advisable.  It’s a greater distance than I would have guessed.)

But most of that is in the past, and now they bring us interesting tidbits from their own lives.  The Human Tape Recorder recommends books for me, which I still find faintly incredible – she’s become a decent judge of whether or not I’ll enjoy a story she’s read, and she’s often right.  I find that impressive in a 10-yr-old, even mine. 

Number One Son has been teaching me to play with an on-line simulator called Dust:  http://dan-ball.jp/en/javagame/dust/, which is both more fun and more addicting than solitare.  In return, I’ve explained to him why some of the items that one can configure and act upon in the game have the properties they do.  For instance, we’ve learned that if you sprinkle water on top of seeds, then add some wind, the seeds will grow.  Often they will grow better following a fire – you can burn a section, and heat will rise and cause things to blow around.

You can also shape some C4 explosive into a bowl, then fill that bowl with nitroglycerin.  Once filled, you can add a few little people running around nearby, add stone for a small mountain, then set up a bombing run.  Once the bombs hit the nitro, it flashes and sets off the C4, and you get to watch the little guys blow around and try to outrun the ensuing fires.  Number One Son can now explain the differences between stable and unstable explosive devices, including gunpowder, C4, nitro, fireworks, gas, and "magma" – which is always a good time if you have a mountain over your cache of powder.  I can tell when he’s working on these activities:  I can hear him providing the voice-overs for the people.  "Frank, look out!  Don’t step in the acid pits!"  "Aaaaagh!"

I’m sure I’m going to hear about this from his second-grade  teacher one of these days…

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