Sunday, May 07, 2006

They Didn't Teach That in Biology . . .

The other night, my seven-year-old niece Ashlee was explaining something to my mother and me. We can barely understand her in the best of times; she has a considerable speech impediment and she talks a mile a minute. This time, she was trying to tell us something she'd learned--something scientific, she said. It had to do with why she has blond hair and fair skin or something like that, and she kept talking about her pants. "I have mommy's pants and daddy's pants and that why I have blond hair and blue eyes."

It took us several minutes to figure out that by "pants" she meant "jeans." Or, as they spell it in the scientific world, "genes."

We tried to explain that it had nothing to do with denim, but I'm still not sure my niece understands that her hair color and eye color are completely unconnected to a pair of Wranglers.

4 comments:

Jennifer McKenzie said...

Oh how cute, Paula. She sounds adorable. I love it when they put their own spin on what they hear.
BTW, I'm glad you had a good time at the luncheon. It is a worthy goal to make compelling characters so that the reader falls in love with them. Jane Austin did that for me. I fell in love with "Mr. Knightly" in "Emma". *Sigh*.

Trish Milburn said...

LOL. Kids say the funniest things sometimes. I'm sure she was very proud of her scientific knowledge.

MJFredrick said...

BWAHAHAHAA!!!

Paula said...

Ashlee's a scream. She's very smart and excruciatingly girly. I was always a tomboy, so dealing with Miss Princess in Pink is sometimes confounding.

Melissa, Ashlee's older sister, is also scary smart. She's obsessed with the weather; the girl will watch The Weather Channel for fun. She's good at math and science, so I'm trying to gently nudge her in that direction for her eventual career. Because the other thing she likes is art, and that's a much harder career path. :)