02 8 / 2011
Just Believe
So I’m telling my kids a bedtime story about Captain Zayah, Super Zoe, and Wonder Jack about how they fought off the Purple, 50-Ton, Mile-Long, Giant Killer Octopus Robot while on vacation at the beach.
My wife, Heather, is listening in, and presumably censoring me.
I start explaining to the kids that the Purple, 50-Ton, Mile-Long, Giant Killer Octopus Robot was shooting out this green goo that was trapping the helpless citizens to the sand. Heather wonders aloud how people can get stuck to sand(completely overlooking the massive robotic cephalopod), and I attempt to explain how the green goo was a sort of non-newtonian fluid.
My definition of the green goo in the narrative was loose enough that it allowed for the children’s belief, but Heather, whose mind has advanced enough to question the fiction that lives in bedtime stories(especially ones with made-up super villains) could not let the plot advance beyond the hole.
Once I began to talk about different viscosities and how the goo, in a very gelatinous fashion, could assume the shape of it’s container, but still have the characteristics of a solid, Isaiah, age 4, interjected.
“Daddy, just tell the story!”
Suspension of disbelief wins again.
