Archive for » April, 2006 «

After extensive research, I have come to the conclusion that children don’t reason like adults. They possess a unique and bizarre logic all their own that makes sense only to them (not unlike women, actually). What’s more, young children don’t reason like older children. The more children experience the world, the more sophisticated and adult-like their schemas become.

This afternoon I sat down with a few of the youngest boys to interview them on their concepts about Nature.

Me: Where does the wind come from?

Boy: The sky.

Me: But what makes the wind?

Boy: The trees.

Me: How do you know?

Boy: Because the branches move like this (demonstrates with arms).

Second Boy: Nah uh.

First Boy: Uh huh.

Second Boy: Nah uh.

First Boy: Uh huh.

Second Boy: Nah uh.

First Boy: Uh huh.

Second Boy: Nah uh.

First Boy: Uh huh.

Second Boy: Nah uh!

First Boy: Uh huh!

Second Boy: Nah uh!!!!

Me: So where do you think the wind comes from?

Second Boy: Angels tooting.

Me: Tooting? From their trumpets?

Second Boy: Noooooooooo. From here (indicates his backside).

Me: You mean the wind is angels farting?

At this point the children erupted into delighted laughter and, I surmise, the first boy assimilated the second child’s explanation into his understanding of weather as the pair of them ran off singing, “Angels are tooting! Angels are tooting!”

There are two conclusions that can be drawn from this exchange. First, when asked to explain the existence of an invisible force, children seem to prefer a primitive sort of mythology over logical scientific thought.

Secondly, flatulence is indisputably hilarious.

- an excerpt taken from Child’s Play (The Satirical Thoughts of a Genius Who Doesn’t Have All the Answers), submitted to W.O.M.P. for authentication.

Since I’ve finally made a full recovery from my long period of illness, I decided to leave the den of infection this afternoon and take a stroll through the park.

I was sitting on a bench, feeding the birds the remnants of a poorly made croissant, when I noticed a young girl with a drawing pad watching me. She couldn’t have been more than four, and appeared greatly enchanted by the birds.

When she crept close enough so that I could initiate conversation, I asked her if she would like a bit of bread to feed our feathered friends. She nodded and timidly accepted the crumbs. A wide grin spread over her face as the birds gathered round her feet.

“I’m going to draw one, Monsieur!” she announced. She sat right there on the sidewalk and opened her little box of pencils. She worked diligently, her tongue protruding from the corner of her mouth as she concentrated on rendering her subject. Her final product looked something like this –

She asked me what I thought of it. “It’s a fine picture indeed,” I told her, examining the child-like mistakes in her portrayal of reality. “Is this a picture of the bird from the front or from the side?” I inquired.

“From the side.”

“Why have you drawn both of the bird’s eyes then?”

“Birds have two eyes, Monsieur.”

“Yes, yes. That is so. I see you have drawn the sun, but it is a cloudy day today.”

She looked up at the sky — for the first time that day, I suspect — and returned her gaze to the picture.

“The sun lives in the sky,” she said.

“Quite right,” I assured her. “Tell me about this blue line at the top.”

“That’s the sky.”

“And the green is the grass, am I right?”

“Yes.”

I pointed to all the white space in between. “And what is here then?” I asked.

The child gave me a look of tender patience. “The bird,” she said.

“Of course,” I chuckled. “It is a beautiful picture.”

“I’ll draw you next!” she declared, once again setting to work.

She drew a head, body, arms, and legs quickly, and then set to the task of rendering me exactly by examining the color of my hair and eyes.

She had just begun sketching my trench coat when her mother appeared at her side.

“Violet, I’ve been searching for you like a madwoman!” she said.

“I was trying to draw a butterfly but it wouldn’t hold still,” the youngster replied unapologetically, still absorbed in her work.

“Your daughter is quite a talented artist,” I said.

The woman’s face softened . . . until she glanced down at the drawing tablet. She gasped.

Violet’s upturned face sought to comfort her agitated mother. “That’s not his penis, Mama. That’s just the part of his coat behind him.”

I attempted to salvage the moment by explaining that the daughter’s advanced intelligence allowed her to understand that my coat continued to exist even in places she couldn’t see, but any hope I had of charming the little Renoir’s mother were dashed to bits. She scooped up Violet in one arm and delivered a smart slap to the side of my face.

But she kept the picture.

- an excerpt taken from Child’s Play (The Satirical Thoughts of a Genius Who Doesn’t Have All the Answers), submitted to W.O.M.P. for authentication.

The first thing I’ve learned about children is that they carry disease like flea-infested vermin. They took me down within a month’s time, bestowing upon me a generous welcoming gift of measles (the culprit of my two week hiatus). Even now as I shuffle around in my bedclothes alternating my time between napping and naming each itchy blotch after a runny-nosed brat, I marvel at the resilience of the child’s body to ward off one plague after another. The boys barely slow or tire even as they burn up with fever. It seems that these young ones are forever functioning in a diseased state and, unconscious of such things as germs, think nothing of coughing or sneezing on anyone within range.

Theodore came to check on me today and assured me that the boys have stopped calling me “Monsieur Blotchy Butt” in my absence.

“Vermin!” was all I could sputter on the subject, and I took to a fit of coughing to emphasize my point and perhaps make Theodore feel guilty for exposing me to the great germ orgy.

“This is how it is for awhile,” he soothed, “until you’ve built up a resistance to disease.”

“Theodore, if I had wanted to infect myself with the plague, I could have just as easily licked a Petri dish.”

“But the Petri dish wouldn’t make you get well cards.”

“I’d prefer a nurse.”

Theodore sighed. “You need to acquire some focus, my friend. You’re making such brilliant discoveries with the children. Your work could be monumental. Perhaps it’s time you give all this skirt chasing a rest.”

“You may be right.”

Theodore looked stunned momentarily. “Ahhhhh . . . so you haven’t heard from her?”

He meant a pretty blonde I’d met at the Sorbonne. She was the kind of gorgeous that make men weak in the knees and lose all rational thought. I’d tried to impress her with details of my innovative research.

“So what exactly do you do?” she’d asked, batting her doe eyes at me.

I became flustered and found myself tongue-tied. “I . . . I, uh . . . I play with little boys.”

I hadn’t heard from her since.

I told Theodore the tragic news. Despite the fact that he thinks women have been an unnecessary distraction, he was sympathetic.

“Well, you were sick at the time. Wasn’t that the day you realized you had measles?”

“It was.”

“Well, you know what they say, ‘Girls don’t make passes at guys with gross rashes.’”

“No one says that.”

“Even so, you weren’t at your best. Your mind is clouded with fever, you look terrible, and . . .”

“What?”

“You smell like overripe cheese.”

While hardly complimentary, Theodore’s words bolstered my self esteem . . . slightly. In all likelihood it is no shortcoming of mine that repelled Marguerite.

She’s just not that into Brie.

- an excerpt taken from Child’s Play (The Satirical Thoughts of a Genius Who Doesn’t Have All the Answers), submitted to W.O.M.P. for authentication.

Such is the plight of the child prodigy.

I took an early interest in science and nature that became something of an obsession. While I do not disparage the desire for learning, I openly acknowledge that I was churning out papers on shellfish when I should have been as prolific in writing love notes to pretty girls. I could impress students of mollusks all over Europe, but I failed to capture the attention of the girl that sat in front of me in math class — the one with the honey colored hair that tossed her head back when she laughed.

With age came little wisdom. I spent my university years studying, writing . . . and little else. I was credited with an admirable quantity of publications, which I foolishly believed would awe lithe young women. Unlike my contemporaries, who spent their time inventing such pointless games as “Absinthe Anal Hole” (or something of that nature), I was fashioning myself into a successful and well-read man.

Not only did my strategy fail to earn me the coveted task of carrying the fiesty redhead’s biology books, but it also took me out of the dating game altogether because I became quite sickly. I was forced to retreat to the mountains for a year dreaming of those beautiful nymphs I had left behind. How could my plan have gone so awry? I worked and suffered in an effort to find female companionship. I got goats.

A student of biology and psychology, I tried to apply my book learning to the problem of getting a girl to say hi. I hope that my present students do not expect guidance in this arena. I have studied psychology for years and I still haven’t figured out what women want.

I believed that I had finally crawled into the female mind when I came to teach at the Sorbonne in France. What better place to seek romance than in Paris? The city had to be full of women just waiting to be swept off their feet! I even registered at www.hot4teacher.com to reach out to young, nubile women too intimidated to approach their lonely instructors. I had it all figured out.

But I have experienced little success in my exploits here too. That is, until now. I have Theodore to thank, I suppose. When he approached me about coming to the Ecole de la rue de la Grange-aux-Belles to research intelligence testing, I was initially hesitant. “Don’t children cry a lot and smell of fromage?” I asked him.

“Only the really young ones,” he said.

Whether a mistake or an untruth, my first week at the school I found myself outside tentatively patting the back of a young boy who was fertilizing the hedges with some partially digested breakfast, yesterday’s lunch and dinner, and, I believe, a spleen.

As I debated the best place to stand to appear supportive while actually protecting my shoes from the spewed chunks, a soft, melodious voice behind us said, “Is your son going to be alright?”

We both spun around (to his credit, the youngster seemed as interested as I) and faced a tall, curvy woman with impossibly long legs, green eyes, and a worried expression. The youth opened his mouth to correct her assumption that he was my offspring, but was thwarted by another retching of liquefied organs. I squeezed his small shoulder and displayed my best look of fatherly concern.

“I’m here to make sure he will be.”

In a flash of insight I realized that I had discovered something more attractive to women than advanced degrees, prestigious careers, or small fuzzy animals. Women are drawn to men who are good with children.

I now can see clearly my life path set out before me — a path paved with fine Parisian derriere.

- an excerpt taken from Child’s Play (The Satirical Thoughts of a Genius Who Doesn’t Have All the Answers), submitted to W.O.M.P. for authentication.