andimthedad

[andimthedad]

Inverse Weenis

Beth: [age 16] "I think I really have people convinced that the inner side of your elbow joint is called the 'inverse weenis.'" Me: "The what?" Beth: "Inverse weenis. Because the outer part of your elbow is called the weenis, so the inner part is the inverse." Me: "Weenis can't be the scientific name of it. Right? I've heard it for years but assumed it was made up." Beth: "No, it's just slang. But it sort of sounds Latin and scientific-ish, and you put 'inverse' in front of it and people think it's true." Me: "It's got truthiness, I guess. How did this come up in conversation today?" Beth: "[Y's] elbow was hurting, so I asked them if it was their weenis or inverse weenis, and in all seriousness they said, 'I never knew the names of that part of the body,' and thanked me." Me: "And you just let it go?" Beth: "Obviously. I just mention this stuff casually as if it's totally true and so far nobody has questioned it." Me: "You might have a future in politics."

[andimthedad]

“We should muffin those bananas.”

— Beth, age 16, our resident baker

It's a snow day, so she's home with extra time. And, we have a few bananas going brown. The solution is obvious, but this is the first time I've heard someone verb the word "muffin." It almost sounds like a colloqualism: "Well, muffin my bananas!" Or a threat: "Oh yeah? Muffin these bananas!"

What other food can we verb? Can you guac an avocado? Can you cake a carrot? Can you pie an apple?

[andimthedad]

Cooking an Omelette

Beth, age 16, has to produce an instructional video for her video editing class. She chose the topic “Cooking an Omelette,” but with the narrative style of a serial killer. 

Here’s one version of the script. The video turned out slightly differently due to production issues, but it's close.

--

[SCENE: the camera slowly pans over a countertop that has all the ingredients for an omelette on it — eggs, mushrooms, bacon, cheese, olive oil/butter — while the narrator begins.] NARRATOR: [slowly, calmly] Before the cooking begins, everything is at peace. The eggs are still whole. The mushrooms are raw. The ingredients have no idea what’s coming.  [SCENE: J-cut so that the sizzling of bacon can be heard first. Then a close up of it in the pan, then pull back to a wider shot of the whole pan.] NARRATOR: An omelette must be cooked in a pan much wider than the final product. The bacon takes the longest to cook, so it must meet its demise first on medium high heat.  [SCENE: Slowed shot of mushrooms falling from a bowl.] NARRATOR: Next, the mushrooms go in. If you listen closely, you can hear their screams of terror. [SCENE: Shot of mushrooms speeds up to normal time as they fall into the pan. Then a shot of olive oil drizzled on.] NARRATOR: Today I am torturing the ingredients in olive oil, but butter works too.  [SCENE: Shot of the pan contents being stirred with a spatula, and then a lid put on.] NARRATOR: Give those poor souls a stir, and then cover them so they don’t burn or dry out.  [SCENE: Match shot that goes from an egg being cracked down on a counter to the yolk/white falling into a bowl. Then cut to several eggs in the bowl being stirred.] NARRATOR: Once the eggs are in the bowl, they must be mixed. But you must not mix them like this: do not “stir” the eggs. [SCENE: The words “DO NOT ‘STIR’ THE EGGS” appear on screen. Then a shot of the eggs being beaten.] NARRATOR: They must be beaten… violently. This makes them have a nice fluffy texture.  [SCENE: Close up shot of bubbles forming on top of the eggs.] NARRATOR: You know your job is done when there are lots of bubbles. This means the eggs have stopped breathing. [SCENE: Shot of mushrooms being stirred in the pan.] NARRATOR: You need to check on the mushrooms every minute or so. Once water starts coming out of them, remove the lid. They're meant to be cooked, not drowned. [SCENE: Shot of eggs being poured over the stuff in the pan.] NARRATOR: When everything else is mostly cooked and there isn’t too much water in the pan, add the eggs and turn the temperature down. Then cover it and let them cook. [SCENE: Shot of lid being added to pan, which immediately transitions to it being removed.] NARRATOR: As soon as the eggs are no longer a liquid, add cheese to the middle. [SCENE: Shot of the cheese being added and then the omelette being folded, and lid put on.] NARRATOR: Fold the omelette around the cheese so that it cannot escape. This step should be easy, unless you’ve burnt it. Put the lid back on as an extra precaution while it melts. It should take less than a minute. Then plate the omelette. [SCENE: Shot of the omelette on a plate being handed to a person.] NARRATOR: Make sure the omelette is enjoyed. All that suffering must be worth something. [SCENE: Shot of a person taking a bite of the omelette, and then a slow close up shot of them smiling before it cuts to black.]

[andimthedad]

Beth, age 16, has made soot sprite cookies for the birthday of a fellow Miyazaki fan.

They're very dark chocolate cookies — barely sweet at all — with spots of white frosting eyeballs and chocolate chip pupils.

Any other Miyazaki fans out there?

[andimthedad]

Pizza, Math, and Nature

[Scene: we're having homemade pizza for dinner]

Beth: [age 16, aghast] "OMG. What did you do?!" Me: "What?" Beth: "Why did you cut the pizza like that? It's a circle. You've completely violated the laws of pizza, math, and nature." Me: "You know, in Italy, they don't even cut your pizza. You have to cut your own slices. This way everyone has options." Beth: [gestures to the pizza] "No, it just makes this worse." Me: "Those Flatbread pizza places cut theirs in rectangular slices. Maybe I'm just being fancy." Beth: "Their pizzas aren't a circle. Cutting a circle like this is just wrong." Me: "What are you, a three-year-old? Are you going to complain because the food isn't the right shape?" Beth: "Oh, it's still pizza. I'm going to eat it. I just have philosophical objections to how you cut it." Me: [rolling eyes] "Now that's just a three-year-old being fancy."

[andimthedad]

Old Exhibit

Beth: [age 16, doing homework] "Do you remember derivatives in calculus?" Me: "Good heavens. I took calculus in college, but that was decades ago." Beth: "So, you don't remember?" Me: "You know how you can go to a museum, and you want to see a certain exhibit, but then you find a sign up saying the exhibit is closed for renovation and something else is going to be put there? That's what happened to calculus in my mind." Beth: "OK, but you still have that... old exhibit... in storage, right?" Me: "I'm sure it's in a mental warehouse somewhere, but it's buried under a lot of other things." Beth: "What new exhibit got put in its place?" Me: "Probably something useful like pop culture trivia." Beth: [sighs]

[andimthedad]

“You don’t have a train of thought, dear. It’s more of a stunt plane.”

— my wife, responding to my apology for not being able to explain how my train of thought arrived at its current destination

[andimthedad]

COMMENCING THE ANNUAL POST-SCHOOLYEAR BURNING OF OLD HOMEWORK AND NOTES

Beth: "The male reproductive system??? WHO NEEDS THAT?!" [tosses a sheaf into the fire]

"PRE-CALCULUS CAN GO MATH ITSELF!" [another sheaf]

"The ideals of democracy??! IF ONLY WE HAD A DEMOCRACY!" [another sheaf]

[andimthedad]

First Recipe

Me: "Hey, your brother found this while looking through the family recipe folder. I think it's your first written recipe."

Beth: [age 16] "Wow. Yeah, that's for a kind of dessert smoothie thing."

Me: "How old were you when you wrote this?"

Beth: "Probably kindergarten? First grade? I was terrible at spelling back then."

Me: "But you understood hyphenation, apparently."

Beth: "Please, that's easy enough to figure out."

Me: "The real question: Is the recipe any good?"

Beth: [dismissively] "Do you really I would write down a recipe that wasn't? Jeez."

[andimthedad]

“Stir until the vibe is right.”

— actual line from Beth's personal brownie recipe when her friends asked her to write it down

The brownies were amazing. Beth (age 15) has baked enough by now that she modifies recipes on the fly, or makes up new recipes, and they (nearly) always turn out well.

[andimthedad]

AAAAAA

Beth: [age 15] "If you spell 'apple' with all capital A's, it's AAAAA!" [screaming the AAAAA loudly] Me: "Hmm. This works for any word. Like 'Monday,' which becomes AAAAAA!" [also screaming the As] Beth: "That's even more appropriate."

[andimthedad]

Red Flag Detector

Beth, age 15, had to program a small digital device in school — an Adafruit Circuit Playground Express, I think.

“I finished the project today,” she said after she got home from school. “Everyone in class had to give their projects to other students to test them.”

“What did you make?” I asked.

“I made a red flag detector. There are a series of multiple-choice questions to answer, and it adds up your score to let me know how many red flags or green flags are in your personality.”

I looked at the picture on her phone. “Are you wearing this on your wrist?”

“That’s what I wanted originally, but then I felt it was too big with the green/red background envelope, so I made it a large pendant instead.” 

“What were the questions?” asked Mom.

“They were folded up on a piece of paper slipped into the envelope behind the circuit board.” She showed us the list:

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1. Do you drink at least 64 oz. (8 cups) of water each day? 

Yes (green)

No (red)

2. Did you enjoy playing with LEGOs as a child?

Yes (green)

No (red)

3. How do you prefer broccoli?

Roasted (green)

Boiled (red)

Not at all (red) 

4. Is $100 too much for a hoodie?

Yes (green)

No (red)

5. Do you shower on a daily basis?

Yes (green)

No (red)

6. Do you floss your teeth every day?

Yes (green)

No (red)

7. How was the Barbie movie with Margot Robbie? Or, if you didn’t see it, then what about Legally Blonde or the cartoon version of Mulan?

Good (green)

Bad (red)

Didn’t see any of them (red)

8. Is any given movie adaptation better than the book?

Yes (red)

No (green)

9. Do you enjoy watching people suffer?

Yes (green)

No (red)

10. Have you committed larceny recently?

Yes (red)

No (green)

Don’t know what it is (red)

11. Do you like dogs?

Yes (green)

Yes, just not Chihuahuas (green)

No (red)

12. Can you cook for yourself? (toasters and microwaves don’t count)

Yes (green)

No (red)

13. Are neon colors better than pastels?

Yes (red)

No (green)

14. Do you spend at least ten minutes outdoors every day?

Yes (green)

No (red)

15. Did you make your bed this morning?

Yes (green)

No (red)

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“That’s pretty funny,” I said, “though it’s rather subjective to you.”

“Yes,” said Mom, “and I think you need to weight these scores. Not liking broccoli is one thing, but ‘watching people suffer’ is a whole different level of red flag.”

“Yeah, that’s a few thousand red flags compared to broccoli or neon colors, or even larceny,” I said. “So how did the testing go with other students?”

Beth sighed. “The first group of testers were all boys. They decided to change some of the red flag answers to green flags. Like, ‘Do you shower on a daily basis?’ they decided ‘yes’ was a red flag. Or ‘Can you cook for yourself?’ they decided ‘yes’ was a red flag. So they changed how they answered the questions just to mess up the results. And they didn’t know what larceny was, so they decided that was not a valid question.”

“That’s a lesson in itself,” I said. “If you’re looking to date, other people are going to have very different standards than you.”

Mom rolled her eyes. “And boys are going to try to change the answers on you — and they’ll probably argue with you about why they think you’re wrong.”

Beth shrugged. “They didn’t argue,” she said. “They didn’t really say anything. I think they don’t know how to talk to girls who are already thinking about red flags.”

[andimthedad]

Case by Case

[Scene: Beth, age 15, and I are talking about driving...] Me: "It's good to be cautious about everyone else on the road. You never know what kind of driver they are." Beth: "So, I should assume they're drunk, or really tired, or can't see straight, or are stupid?" Me: "Yeah, that about covers it." Beth: "I assume that about everybody else all the time anyway." Me: "Ouch. You're not including me in 'everybody else', right?" Beth: "Well, you're on a case-by-case basis."

[andimthedad]

Beth (age 15) dug out my original 1980s blue spaceman from our bin of LEGOs and made it into a ring. Some girls like diamonds, but a blue spaceman ring sends a different message.

[andimthedad]

Nuke a Vegetable

[Scene: we are discussing options for a quick dinner...] Mom: "...and then we could nuke a frozen vegetable." Beth: [age 15] "Nuke?" Mom: "Microwave. It's a throwback term from the 80s." Me: "Have you never heard me say that?" Beth: "Maybe, but I thought it was just another one of your old people things." Me: "Hey now." Mom: "When microwaves first came out, people acted like they used nuclear power to heat food. I remember when we got our first Radar Range. It was amazing. It didn't have a rotating glass dish in it, though. It just sat there. It had two dials, one for minutes and one for seconds. You could put a slice of frozen pizza in it, and when it was ready, one end was baked to the consistency of leather, the other end was still almost frozen, but the middle was just right." Me: "We had a Radar Range too, which is kind of a weird name because it's not radar. And sometimes microwave instructions on food would tell you to rotate the food every few minutes." Beth: "I saw that once! I had no idea why it said that, so I actually stopped the microwave and rotated it." Me: "You could buy a wind-up rotating platter for it. Purely mechanical. You had to spin it to wind it up." Mom: "We never had one of those. Too fancy for us." Me: "But it was all still magical back in the day. Probably why we associated it with atomic power." Mom: "Hence 'nuking' your food." Me: "New peace slogan: nuke food, not people." Beth: "Nobody says they nuke their food anymore." Mom: "But I just did." Me: "There we go: Gen X getting ignored again."

[andimthedad]

This year for Valentine's Day, Beth's anatomically-correct heart cookies included this styling of raspberry glaze and red sprinkles, which she titled, "Microplastics Embedded In Your Arteries."

I think it beats last year's bloody cookies.

[andimthedad]

Beth: [age 15] "I think I offended my English teacher." Me: "How did you manage that?" Beth: "You know how we're reading Beowulf in class?" Me: "Yes...?" Beth: "It turns out my English teacher really likes Beowulf. He might have even written his graduate thesis on something about it." Me: "And...?" Beth: "So he asked me today what I thought of it so far, and I said that honestly I found it really boring. The writing is difficult to read, and things like characters and plot are kind of lacking." Me: "Did he take that personally?" Beth: "Kind of. He started arguing with me, and then this other boy did too, and they both kept trying to explain that it's really old literature so it doesn't have a lot of plot twists and things like that. And then I said, 'I've read the Bible. It's got more plot twists than Beowulf!' — and the teacher looked offended, genuinely." Me: "Well... you're not wrong. The Bible has more plot twists than Beowulf, and it's a lot older too." Beth: "I don't know why we have to read Beowulf anyway. It feels like we have to read it just because a lot of old white guys have said for centuries that it's great literature." Me: "You're probably not wrong there, either." Beth: "But I don't want to offend my English teacher. He's a good teacher. I just don't like Beowulf." Me: "If you're really concerned, you could apologize." Beth: "Plot twist: I'm not that concerned."