Context is everything

It only takes a conversation with a preschooler to remind us of how much a child's experiences color the way he interprets the world. Some examples:

K was reciting the poem, "One for the money..." and he asked me to repeat each line after him. When I repeated the line "Two for the show," he stopped me. "Not 'Two for the SHOW..'" he said, "Two for the SHUL."
Oh. Excuse me!

I was reading to D from an ad for the circus: "Hold on to your hats!"
"Why does it say 'Hold on to your HATS?" he asked. "Why doesn't it say 'Hold on to your KIPAHS?"

I read another line from the ad: "The Greatest Show on Earth!"
"Why is it on EARTH?" D asked. "It should be in a PLACE! On the GROUND!"

The Wedding Planner

D was drinking orange juice out of a plastic bottle that had a top shaped like a football helmet. This led to the following conversation:

D: Mommy and Daddy got this at their wedding. They BOUGHT it there.
Me: You can buy things at a wedding? I didn't know that. What else can you buy at a wedding?
D: Um- not kosher ham. And hamburgers, and oranges, and tomatoes, and chicken, and cucumbers.
M: What is a wedding, anyway? What's it for?
D: It's for people when they get older.
M: Like a birthday?
D: Yes. If you're a boy you have a Bar Mitzvah and if you're a girl you have a Bat Mitzvah.
M: How old will you be when you have a Bar Mitzvah?
D: 10.
M: How old do you have to be to get married?
D: 15.
M: Did you go to Mommy and Daddy's wedding?
D: I don't remember.
M: What about K and T?
D: Not T, she wasn't born. I don't know if K and me were there.
M: Maybe you were home with a babysitter?
D: If I was home with a babysitter, it was you.

Bones?

In our city/suburban existence, we are so far removed from the original sources of our food that sometimes it's easy to forget that kids have no idea where much of their food comes from (Jewel, of course!)
Case in point: yesterday, K was sitting at our kitchen counter, finishing up some leftover popcorn. When it was nearly gone, he asked me, "Bubbie, can we make more popcorn? There's only bones left!"

Wuh's up?

The grandchildren & their parents were on vacation this week. Tuesday afternoon, my cell phone rang--it was D.
"Bubbie, guess where we are!" he exclaimed. I knew where they were, but I played along.
"7-11?" No. "A restaurant?" No. "The park?" No. "The museum?" No.
"OK, give me a hint," I said.
D answered, "It starts with a "wuh."
"A 'wuh'?" I asked him, wondering what on earth a "wuh" could be. "Hmmm- I give up," I said.
"Wuh-sconsin!" he yelled happily.

What's so funny?

The boys slept over last night, and this morning D crawled into bed with Papa. A few minutes later, the clock-radio went on.
"What's that?" D asked.
"That's the radio," Papa explained. "It's like an alarm clock."
"Oh. That's funny!" D said. Then he paused, and, very seriously, asked, "Why is that funny?"

Techno-kids

Since they were born in the 21st century, K & D have no idea that all of the technological things they now take for granted didn't exist several years ago. Cell phones; iPods; DVD's; all these things lead kids to see the world through a kind of techno-lens. When I was a kid, we attributed things we couldn't understand to "magic," but now is there anything at all that can't be conceivably explained through some electronic device? Apparently not, according to D:
On Sunday we were in the park, and we saw a girl flying a kite. D said, "She's flying that kite and it doesn't even have a string." I explained that the kite did have a string, but that we couldn't see it because we were too far away. "How could the girl fly it if it didn't have a string?" I asked him.
He answered, "Maybe she has a remote."