GUESS WHAT?

Saturday, January 28, 2006

"Hey Mom! Guess what?"

Sarah begins anything she says to me in this fashion. Anything from "I love you" to "Becca just flooded the bathroom." Two things are sure about what comes next:

• If I don't say "What?", she will merely repeat Hey Mom Guess What until I do, even if I look at her in a way that should prompt her to speak her piece
• There is never any way of Guessing What; Sarah's brain is deep and completely random

"What?"

We're driving home in January rain from Sarah's dentist appointment. She got her first filling, which she thought was "fun".

"Every ant colony has a queen that has a huuuge butt full of babies! She gets her own room because she has babies all the time. And when she dies, they split her open to get out the rest of the babies! And then the colony has to, like, SNATCH a queen from another colony or wait till the babies grow up to get a new queen!"

It really is not clear what brought on this diatribe. I don't try to figure it out anymore, I just allow it to entertain me.

"And ALSO, Mom. Guess what?"

I look at her in the rearview mirror. Surely the Novacaine is wearing off by now? "What?"

"There are these plants called Cobra plants and they are sort of like Venus Fly Traps because they both eat flies. But the Cobra makes like, FLY SOUP in its mouth while it digests the fly and you can see the soup floating around in there."

Because I am only home two days a week, Sarah has to give me a concentrated knowledge transfer before I go back to San Diego for a week. I have been home only 1 day and so far, I have gotten several Wonders of Animalia stories, a couple playground dramas, 3 unrelated stories about kids (including Sarah) losing teeth at school, hints about how to keep straight which English words have double Ls (really) versus those with single (sadly), news of the dissection of owl pellets in 4th grade science, and a run-down of all of Becca's Crimes Against Sarah for the week.

And I will never Guess What tomorrow might bring.