Five year old’s logic
He answers the questions
Q: What is this dam for ?
A: Its for fish and sharks
Q: There’s no fish or sharks here, so… what is it for ?
A: Its to kill fish and sharks
Smart kid. I never knew that. When Beavis and Butthead took a tour of the Hoover dam, they just kept asking the tour guide if it was a goddamn.
My youngest comes up with crazy explanations for things sometimes too. Some of them even make a little a sense if you look at it from her perspective. My oldest is a different story. She is a little too literal sometimes. She mortified us when she was 5 by trying to use one of the home improvement display commodes in Home Depot for their obvious purpose right in front of everyone.
I was four, at the O Club in Yokosuka, speaking Japanese to a dog outside the window.
Mom: Johnny? Why are you speaking Japanese to that dog?
Me: He’s a Japanese dog!
A thumb is really your five-finger (count to five, starting with your index finger)
Last week is more logically called yesterweek.
I teach youth program classes at a climbing gym. I asked a group of six-year-olds why they thought there was colored tape on the walls. One girl, in typical six-year-old stop-and-start rambling fashion, spluttered out an answer which ended with “so that way there will be colored tape on the walls.” Yes, darling. The colored tape is there so that there will be colored tape there. Very good. (It’s used to indicate different routes.)
Our three-year-old figured out the caps lock on Mommy’s computer lets you type out capital A, B, C, etc…and then he asked me, “But what about capital 1?”
Since the meal served in place of both breakfast and lunch is called “brunch,” the meal served in place of lunch and dinner is called “linner.” Right?
In order to keep the peace, I agreed.
5 year-old kid. “Can we get two mice?”
Parent: " I don’t think thats a good idea, the cats would try to eat them all the time."
Kid thinks for 30 seconds: “Can we get 10 mice and give 8 to the cats so they will leave our 2 alone?”
In all fairness, I agree completely too. Why should it not be so?
While playing Mastermind: “What if you have the wrong color in the right place?”
It could be “Lupper” too, but “Linner” is a logical name for that meal.
My daughter just turned three. Post-discipline discussions with her go like this:
“Daddy smacked my butt!”
“Why did he do that?”
“Cuz he smacked my butt.”
“I think you were being naughty. Why were you being naughty?”
“Cuz daddy smacked my butt.”
“No Mimi. You were naughty before daddy smacked your butt. Why were you being naughty?”
“Cuz daddy smacked my butt and I cried.”
“Okay. Tell me what you did that was naughty.”
“I cried.”
“And why were you crying?”
“Cuz daddy smacked my butt.”
We’ve been using the term for quite a few years in my household.
From my daughter, when she was 4:
“There are cowboys and horse girls… I am going to be a Horse Girl, who is a ballerina at night, because Ballerinas only dance at night…”
Not too sure where the Ballerinas only dance at night thing came from…
My friend and I were working in his basement when his 2 1/2 year old son came downstairs with tear filled eyes and his bottom lip sticking out a mile. “What’s the matter, Brooks?” I asked him and he replied, with righteous indignation, “Ashley (his 4 year old sister) hit me BACK!”
I managed to keep a straight face and pointed him to where his daddy was working.
Look daddy! Stairs!
No son. That’s an escalator. The steps are moving. Which way are they going?
They’re going up!
And where do they go when they get to the top?
Observes for a moment They go to the other side and come back down!
There are upper-case and lower-case numerals, but they’re not called out as separate characters, just glyph variants. Link to example.
Similarly, when my kiddo learned to count, she was in the back of the car one day counting up to 10, and then counting backwards to 1. She did that a few times, then paused, then asked, “Daddy, how do you count side-to-side?”
My now-6-year-old son still wears a shirt he got when he was four, which features a drawing of a dog wearing sunglasses. Like many of his shirts, it was christened with the name of what was pictured on it. (“Do want to wear T-rex today?” “Ooh, you’re wearing Shark!” etc.) This shirt was “Doggie with Two Noses.”
Why? Well, obviously the dog has its own nose, of course. That’s one. And, as we all know, glasses sit across the bridge of your nose, so clearly the part where the dog’s glasses rest is a nose, too.
Hence, “Doggie with Two Noses.” Q.E.D.
Didn’t Snoopy in his Joe Cool (or was it Joe College) phase wear sunglasses?