All parents consider their own children to be geniuses, presumably as a way of gaining street cred for having the enabling genes to make it possible, despite so blatantly failing to achieve anything in particular themselves. And I'm no different.
So I was naturally pretty impressed when the Hatchling, newly minted 4 years old, asked us the other day why people at the bottom of the earth don't fall off.
I explained to her, using my best Up-Goer Five talk, that things always fall down, but "down" is not an absolute frame of reference (and I'm clearly paraphrasing myself here) - rather it is relative to the nearest large mass, which in our case is the Earth, so things always fall towards the centre of the Earth, this direction thus being perceived locally as "down". She took that in her stride and didn't ask any further questions - a clear indication of either:
(a) superior intelligence and innate grasp of Newtonian physics, or
(b) superior intelligence and innate tolerance of my babbling nonsense.
The common thread being superior intelligence, I hasten to remind you.
So I was somewhat put out later that same day when she was attempting to eat a bowl of ice-cream and was dropping the ice-cream all over the floor, the table and herself. On closer inspection, I realized she was holding the spoon upside-down.
Derr.
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