I Broke Science

On Thanksgiving, my little nephew and I hung out in my parents' library, by the fire, looking through books. He pulled them off the shelves, crawled onto my lap, and flipped the pages, while I explained what we were looking at.

I didn't actually know what we were looking at, because we mostly went through old Time/Life books about nature, so I had to read the picture captions and do my best to sound authoritative. Because he's used to storybooks where all the characters say things, including the animals, he would look at each picture and ask, "What he's saying?" And I'd quickly skim the caption and translate it into something incredibly clever, like, "I'm a lizard. I sit on rocks."

He liked the reptile book so much that he asked to go through it again a couple days later, and kept asking for the "poop picture." Except there was no poop picture. There had been a picture of a snake laying eggs -- could that be what he was talking about? How had I managed to convey that laying eggs was similar to pooping? If I were asked to clear up the confusion right this minute, the best I could do would be to tell him that eggs are white (mostly).

Better leave the science to his dad. If the kid ever decides he needs a melancholy metaphor for the futility of existence, then he can come to Aunt Holly: Work is like pooping. No matter how much you've done, you'll eventually have to do more.