You Know When?

I picked the kids up from school on a day that they had all attended an after school class.  Owen is taking a comic book drawing class, and Lilly and Sam are taking sign language.

Sam said, "Lilly was lying on the ground during class."

"Lilly, why were you lying on the ground?"

"Because, like, my heart hurt, you know?"

"Lilly." Owen says, with scorn and derision.  Everything Owen says to Lilly if full of scorn and derision. "Do you mean your CHEST hurt?"

"Yeah," she replies.  "My chest and lungs."

Sam pipes up, which is, in itself, somewhat unusual, because he is so OVER "kid" conversation.  He told me the other day that he just didn't really find Owen and Lilly very interesting.  That, sure, he was "technically" still a kid, but what did that even mean, really?

It means you are 11, dude.  Chill out.

So it was notable that he was choosing to engage in this conversation.

"Oh, I know exactly what you mean Lilly.  Like when you eat too much protein?"

Huh?

"Oh, yeah, totally," They all chorus in agreement.

"Or, like, too much applesauce?" Sam continues.

"Exactly," they respond.

Soooooo.  Is this a thing?  A protein and applesauce related heart attack?  That happens to everybody else but me?

Hidden Interests

The kids have been very very very much enjoying the Alexas they got for Christmas.  Mostly, they like Alexa to read them books.  They don't read to themselves as much as they used to, and I am suspicious that this is a sneaky end run around the no-electronics-in-the-house rule, but I can't find any real reason to make a rule outlawing listening to books, so it continues unabated.  After they listened to the same free book about elevendy million times, we bought them a few books on Audible.

Now we don't see them anymore.

So that's great.

But, like crack, you have to keep buying more.  So Lilly and I were on Audible today, and I asked her what kinds of books she might be interested in.  It was a throw-away comment.  One I don't really expect her to even answer.

One time, in grad school, my advisor asked me what kinds of books I like to read and I blurted out, "mysteries!" which is actually the only kind of book that I absolutely DON'T like to read.  And that was when I was a grown adult.

So I wasn't really listening when Lilly said, "Hmmm.  Maybe Native Americans?"

I'm scrolling through the Beverly Cleary books . . .

Wait.  What?

"Or homing pigeons?"