the thinker

Lizzy's a sharp little one. It's pretty hard to get anything past her.

For instance: With memories of my brother's noncommittal teenage shrugs still fresh in my memory, I nonetheless press on each evening as I pick up Lizzy from day care: "What did you do today, honey?" Sometimes, she'll have a strange little anecdote about how she and some combination of her friends Sean, Henry, Alex and Nicholas pretended to be something-or-other. Or maybe someone inflicted an injury, real or imaginary. ("Well, Lucas bit me!" as she shows me a bruise that I know she's had for a week.) Almost never the sorts of things I expect to hear about, such as dance class; or the famous traveling minstrel, Mr. Knick-Knack; or what she had for lunch; or something else specific to that day's activity.

The other day, she really threw me for a loop. I said, "Lizzy, what did you do at school today?" She kind of sighed, and shrugged, and gave lazy answers to a couple of more specific questions. Then she piped up, more enthusiastically: "Mom, what did YOU do at WORK today?"

Uhhh... *crickets chirping*

All I could come up with was, "Well, a guy who had long hair got it cut really short!" Believe you me, that was high excitement among my coworkers. Seriously. We were shooting out of our seats to see this reporter, headed to Iraq, and his shockingly shorn mane.
Lizzy wasn't very impressed, though.