English for nonmajors

There's a lot of grading going on around the house today. (Well, not at the moment.) That required a definition of what essays are: "A bunch of paragraphs to tell someone else about what you read."

The jump rope queen responded, "Then I don't want to go to college because I don't like doing that."

Later, after listening to "The Chocolate Sundae Mystery" on the computer, my little jumper said she thinks one of the minor characters had a crush on one of the major characters. I asked her to refer to the text to support her claim.

We started the mystery again (fifth time since Friday evening?), and the story arrived at the moment when the minor character blushes and is nervous when first interacting with the major character, jumper piped in, "That's why I think he has a crush on her."

She might like college after all.

Skinnerian shopping

When the kids and I get groceries, we usually go to Wild Foods, where they have tiny carts for children to push. There's a fair amount of faux racing, but last week's carting had extra oomph, and there were many intra-familial collisions.

I was prepared to pull the plug on the whole expedition -- yuppies and hippies alike were appalled by my apparently inadequate daddying. Then I pulled out a move from Grand Master D's preschool, adapted for the materials at hand like a behavioral psychologist MacGyver. We adopted the three twist-tie rule. If three twist ties were secured to the cart -- awarded for inappropriate behavior -- we would leave on the spot, notifying a worker of the location of our carts and groceries on our way out. GMD earned two.

He would have earned a third for punching the cardboard cutout of a Peruvian peasant woman, but she was by the exit.