Our kids are obsessed by them.
“Bring me facts or bring me death!” they yell, banging
their fist on a desk and slurping coffee.
This sounds great for the offspring of a
journalist (yes, we often deal in facts) and a doctor (facts designed to
scare the crap out of you). And it usually is. I’m learning more these days
than I ever did at school, thanks to some “weird but true” books which arrived
recently.
This is a beautiful part of being a parent to a six and a five-year-old.
On one hand we’re supposed to know stuff, like how to complete a tax
assessment, untangle a ball of string, or lose thousands of dollars on the
stock exchange. But what’s more fun? Learning all that, or that dolphins sleep
with one eye open?
There are some stunning facts out there,
all being delivered with the gusto of a child who thinks they’re the most
amazing things ever.
There are short, smack-you-in-the-face
facts: Crocodiles can lay 80 eggs!
Facts that need more explaining: Bolivia
has two capitals!
Facts that can frighten: If you dive to the
bottom of the Mariana Trench, you’ll be squashed like a bug!
Facts you just can’t believe: A blue whale
is almost as loud as a jet engine, but a five-centimetre pistol shrimp is
louder than a blue whale!
There are ewy facts: Sweat smells because
it mixes with bacteria that live on our skin. What's more, the average person performs
14 farts a day!
There are gooey facts: Nose hairs trap dirt
and dust, then mucus forms around it and that’s what snot is!
And there are more complex facts: “Hair,
which is protein, goes curly when sulfur atoms form a disulfide bond which
bends the protein. The more sulfur a person has, the curlier their hair will
be.”
I hate these ones, for they are inevitably
followed by one or more questions. “Daddy, what’s sulfur? And what’s a disulfide bond? And
what’s protein?” These are the only occasions in this family you’ll hear the words:
“Just wait til your mother gets home!” The best I can offer is that there must
be sulfur in bread crusts.
Sometimes I’m the one asking the questions,
like “What the hell is a tarsier?” or "Instead of trying to turn that broccoli into a diamond, could you just eat it please?"
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A tarsier, yesterday. They can't move their eyes, you know! If they're not endangered, then they probably should be. |
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Tiger Father home hints: Save money on those cash-burning diamonds by taking a piece of broccoli like the one above and turning it into this ... |
The trouble is, like earthquakes, there’s no predicting it. A fact can hit you at any time. I’m rushing to get the girls dressed for school and bang - “DADDY! ANTS DON’T SLEEP!”
I’m cleaning the chocolate from Evie’s
mouth before mum gets home and it’s “Daddy did you know there’s a hotel that
looks like a dog?”
I tuck Lani in and whisper ‘Goodnight’ and
it’s “Daddy – a great white shark weighs the same as 15 gorillas!”
“OK, goodnight.”
“A French woman lived til she was 122!”
“Good …”
“And a clam lived til it was 405!”
“… NIGHT!”
Last night I was at the end of my tether.
“EVIE! If you don’t finish you’re dinner by the time I count to - “
“DADDY THERE ARE MORE STARS IN THE UNIVERSE
THAN GRAINS OF SAND ON THE EARTH!”
“NOW
LISTEN … Really?”
It’s hard to recover from a non-sequitur
like that.
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This is one of those so-called "facts" I struggle to believe. Here is a beach. |
I’m a little bit scared, to be honest. What if the brain really is like an attic full of boxes, and when one box goes in another gets pushed out? There are boxes in my attic my wife would rather I threw out. Not the ones containing ex girlfriends. More like the one holding cricket statistics, or the one with the names of all the winners of the Melbourne Cup, Australia’s biggest horse race. But you can’t choose which boxes are tossed. What if tomorrow I learn that a hurricane weighs as much as 160 million rhinos, but forget how to ride a bike? Or I might forget the date of my wife’s birthday? At least now our kids have given me an excuse.
Their little heads are so filled with
wonder. As I’ve mentioned before, we don’t feel we need other little pieces of
wonder not so easily explained by science – like the Easter Bunny – to fill our
children with awe.
My wife had it half this way as a child.
She once asked her mother what a rainbow was and was told it was a staircase to
heaven. Her more scientific father overheard and barked “WHAT?!” He then made her sit through a lengthy spiel involving the colour spectrum and light refraction. Well, she
was three after all.
My dad had some interesting facts for me. I
once asked where the dirt track behind our house led. For years afterwards I
believed it went all the way to Sydney, 600km away. I also believed that if you
gulped beer you would simply blow up. Now I too am a parent, I can put these
facts down to the fact my dad just couldn’t be bother … err, has a cheeky sense of fun.
What’s more, a strict adherence to the
truth can get boring too. Like my dad, I have some facts I stick to with our
daughters. My wife rolls her eyes, but I will keep aloft the torch that says
warts come from touching toads. I also like to remind my girls each night that
if they don’t eat their vegetables they will, as night follows day, get scurvy. If they sit too close to the TV, their eyes will go square. Kissing boys will of course lead to myriad unspeakable horrors.
We actually have a double whammy going at home in that a series of joke books have arrived lately alongside the fact books. It’s like watching the news read by Don Rickles.
Let’s not list the jokes, for they suck. But to give you an idea of our house at present, try:
A SPIDER HEARS WITH ITS LEGS!
We actually have a double whammy going at home in that a series of joke books have arrived lately alongside the fact books. It’s like watching the news read by Don Rickles.
Let’s not list the jokes, for they suck. But to give you an idea of our house at present, try:
Knock knock.
Who’s there?
Interrupting geek.
Interrupting ge …
PS: Yes, the facts listed above are all
true. Recommended reading: National Geographic Kids “Ultimate Weird But True”.
And “The Big Book of Why”, by Time for Kids.
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