When Scout was three, we saw a dead fish at the side a lake. "He's going to miss us," she said.
"Is it okay not to believe in skeletons?" she once asked me. (Also: "Could a coconut kill you?" "Why don't motorcycles have seat belts?")
In kindergarten, Scout was asked to write a sentence about a feeling. "I am mad that I have lice."
Riding past a Chicago cemetery, she saw that some grave markers were taller than others. "Dad, were those people bigger than everybody else?"
"Dad—did you know that Helen Keller was a trickster?"
"Dad! There was this guy who was totally poor, lonely and drunk. He was peeing between our trash cans!"
At eight, urging her two-year-old cousin up the stairs. "Come on, Parker. While we're young."
She was always saying cute stuff like that.
Now she's 11, and her experience includes events such as Lollapalooza. And she observes that she knows when she needs a shower when her body odor smells "kind of like pot smoke."
On his last day of summer school, my youngest son was given an assignment to decorate a foam hat and write “Summer 2015” on it. Instead, he took the opportunity to express his thoughts on the entire summer school experience, which were: “I did not agree to this.”