Daddy, daddy! It’s an emergency! It’s super important!
What?
I need you to make an app that knows where frogs are cause I want to start finding frogs.
Ten minutes later:
You can name it whatever you want! I think you should call it FrogSearchApp. Can you do it tonight?
My four year-old just ran up to me, pushed a candy bar up to my face, and said
I’ve had a long day so I need this Hershey bar!
Today, half-way through week two of quarantine, the kids spent an hour drawing pictures and writing letters to their grandparents and great-grandmother. After they finished, we helped them stuff their drawings into envelopes and addressed them for the mail tomorrow.
Tonight, as I’m sitting in my son’s room waiting for him to fall asleep, he’s performing his favorite stalling tactic of peppering me with any and all questions about life, the universe, and everything in-between. After a quiet moment, he sits up and asks…
Daddy? Why does mail need antelopes?
What?
Why do we need antelopes to send mail to G-mo’s house? Why can’t the mailman just take it to her?
At this point I’m so incredibly confused. And then it finally dawns on me…
No, buddy. Not antelopes. You put your letters in envelopes to protect them and keep them safe until they get there.
I guess the US Postal Service just must have been on his mind tonight, because a few minutes later…
Daddy? Why do you always throw away the mail after you take it out of the mailbox?
Because most of it is junk mail. It’s stuff we don’t want.
Why do people send you mail you don’t want?
Junk mail is like mail with commercials on it. People send it to us because they want us to buy stuff from them.
Why don’t they just call it garbage mail instead?
I gotta give it to him. That’s actually a way better name for it.
And then, finally, a few minutes after that…
The mailman comes in the morning, right?
Yes.
Why don’t we just talk to him and tell him not to bring us garbage mail anymore?
My six year-old to me:
Daddy, why are you eating that whole box of Oreos? Won’t you get sick and throw up like you tell us we will?
Me, in a rare moment of honesty:
Because grownups’ brains don’t work right all the time and eating makes us feel better.
A friend tweeted
The hardest part of the current situation is explaining it to the kiddoes. They’re still attending school, however the school is enacting social distancing, and separation between the various classes (no playing in the playground at the same time, etc).
And my reply
Friday, son asks why he can’t go inside daughter’s daycare for pickup. I say "because of the germs". "But only my school is closed for germs!" And then I emotionally felt like I was about to tell him a loved one died: "Actually, the germs are everywhere…"
And this afternoon we had a discussion with both kids about how they can’t go see their friends, or cousins, or leave the yard, or go to school for the next month or two at least. Son is likely gonna miss the last 1/4 of Kindergarten. This is gonna fuck up so many things.
When a community is destroyed by a hurricane or earthquake, etc., the rest of the world can help them rebuild. As devastating as Katrina and to a lesser extent the 2010 Nashville flood were, a city or even a state being down is manageable.
But when it’s the whole world?
