The Free-Ride offspring, talking during dinner:
Younger offspring: I’m not ever going to die.
Elder offspring: You don’t know that. You might get hit by a car just before you turn 90.
Younger offspring: No, I will not!
Elder offspring: How can you be sure? Have you gone into the future to see?
Younger offspring: I’m not going to the future!
Dr. Free-Ride: Are you planning to wake up tomorrow?
Younger offspring: Yes.
Dr. Free-Ride: Then you’re going to the future.
Younger offspring: But waking up tomorrow isn’t like using a time machine.
Dr. Free-Ride: That’s true.
Elder offspring: So, can we really go to the future?
Dr. Free-Ride: Well … Saturday is in the future right now.
Elder offspring: Right.
Dr. Free-Ride: And we’ll get to Saturday in just a matter of hours.
Younger offspring: So we can go to the future? By waiting for Saturday?
Dr. Free-Ride: But by the time it’s Saturday …
Elder offspring: Saturday won’t be in the future! It will be the present!
Dr. Free-Ride: That’s the tricky thing about the future. It’s all the time that hasn’t happened yet. So once it happens —
Elder offspring: The time that comes after it is the future.
Younger offspring: I’m still not going to get hit by a car before I turn 90.
Dr. Free-Ride: That’s because you cross the street carefully every single time.
* * * * *
While being tucked in:
Elder offspring: Is [younger offspring] a test-tube baby?
Dr. Free-Ride: What? What gave you that idea?
Younger offspring: What’s a test-tube baby?
Dr. Free-Ride: When the sperm and the egg are brought together in a container in a laboratory, and then the fertilized egg is put into the mom’s uterus to gestate, that’s a test-tube baby. You, child, are not a test-tube baby.
Elder offspring: That’s what a test-tube baby is? I thought it was something else.
Dr. Free-Ride: What did you think a test-tube baby was?
Elder offspring: When the fertilized egg gestates in a test-tube or something, so the mom doesn’t have to deal with the pain or the blood or that stuff when the baby is born.
Dr. Free-Ride: Oh, an artificial womb? Nope, they don’t have those yet. Not that they wouldn’t be really convenient.
Younger offspring: Maybe in the future.
Janet,
I nominate you to serve on the (future) committee entrusted to put together a plan for K-12 sex education. I hope the plan will be implemented before your younger offspring turns 90.
Younger offspring’s last comment was priceless.
Womb with a View
And your kids rock! Yes, you knew that already, but just for the record.
Hah! Brilliant!
These immensely bright kids are just destined to be science-fiction writers..! I for one would love to read a time-travel book written by and for under-tens. Keep up the good work.
Kids say the weirdest things at the most appropriate times. Maybe you should tell your kids about the story of asiko. Maybe they can be part of a “time travel uprising”. I just read the that short story, which is about time travel. Astonishing story, to say the least.