Explanations, Common Household Style

These are conversations from last year, when there were more children around the house.

"Surprised Egg"
Sketch in pen
by Younger Daughter, 2012

Scientific Method, Common Household style

My husband and son were telling me about their meal at IHOP.  (An aside: this is a thing in the Common Household: discussing past meals, as if they are an important part of history.) My son was astonished that the waitress offered them hot sauce.

Husband:  Some people like hot sauce with their eggs.  But maybe you could just feed hot sauce directly to the chickens, and then you wouldn’t have to add the hot sauce to the eggs.  Or maybe you could even make spicy chicken that way!

Me:  Tandoori chicken from the inside out.

Younger Daughter:  We need to do this experiment.  With goats as a control.

Son:  Why are goats the control?

Husband, pointing out the obvious:  To see if they can generalize to non-avian species.

The use of the words "goat" and "control" in the same
sentence seems unusual.

* * * * * * *

Economics, Common Household Style

Husband:  Why did the Vikings die out?  Well. Their economy depended heavily on walrus tusks… But then someone discovered elephant tusks in Africa, and the elephant tusks were bigger than the walrus tusks, so the Viking economy failed. 

Me:  I think NPR is trying out an April 1st story a little early.

* * * * * * *

Foreign Policy, Common Household Style

Husband:  The Pharmacy School is going to Make America Great Again!

Me:    Oh, yeah?  What are you going to do about Syria?

Husband:    We’re going to sprinkle cocaine all over.  Everyone in Syria will be happy again. And then they will become addicted and they will be willing to do anything we want in order to get their next fix.  That’s the School of Pharmacy solution.

* * * * * * *

Agricultural Economics, Common Household Style

Younger Daughter was describing a question on her economics final exam.

YD:  The question on the exam was: the farmer can plant either corn or soy, and the price of corn increases.  What will happen to the price of soy?

Me:  It depends on a lot of things.  It’s complicated.

YD:  Yes!

Husband: The price for soybeans stays high because nobody eats soybeans.

Me:   Cows eat soybeans and corn.

Husband:  So if we ate more cows then it will drive the price of soybeans down because there will be fewer cows and therefore less demand for soy.

YD:   No, there would be more demand for soybeans because demand for cows would go up.  So we would plant more soybeans.

Husband:   Why can’t you combine the DNA of soy and corn, and then you can plant that crop.  We can call it…..

YD:    Scorn!

Me: Scorn has already been planted everywhere in our nation.

Husband:   The US will be exporting scorn to China. And Korea. We will fill our trade deficit with scorn.

* * * * * * *

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And I will leave it at that, because it does seem that this week, the president planted scorn all across our nation, and is exporting it everywhere.