Beech Tree News Network

If you want to know how much you know, invite a three-year-old over for a visit.  You will impress yourself.
    This week, after several conversations about animals, I’ve discovered I know all kinds of stuff.  There are Asian elephants and African elephants, for instance.  Asian elephants have smaller ears and a twin domed head with a dent in the middle.  African elephants have a larger, single-domed head and large ears. The blue whale is the largest animal in the world.  (Thanks, Nik.)  Pandas live in China and at the zoo.  Tree frogs won’t bite you, penguins can’t live in your bath tub for long periods of time, and horses can’t eat at the kitchen table.  Dogs, however, could possibly ice skate; they surf and skate-board, after all.
    I really don’t mind answering all the questions my granddaughter puts to me, and I’ve made the effort to say “I don’t know” a few times.  It takes an effort for me to say that, because I am a find-out, get-to-the-bottom-of-things person.  I’ll Google stuff or call people or read up on anything I don’t know.  I’ve realized that saying “I don’t know” to a three-year-old gives them permission to not know something themselves without feeling they have inferior intelligence.  The next step in the process will be, “I don’t know, but let’s find out.”  When my granddaughter gets past the lets-take-this-apart stage, we will look up information on the computer together.
    I’ve also realized I know a lot about the physical world around us.  Clouds are made up of water, chlorophyll makes grass green, and to estimate the temperature in degrees Fahrenheit, count the number of cricket chirps in 15 seconds then add 37.  Okay, so I read that cricket fact inside a Snapple lid, yesterday, but I did already know that crickets are related to grasshoppers and are nocturnal, but for the life of me, I can’t remember how to convert Fahrenheit to Celsius and vice versa.
    Each succeeding generation teaches the generation before.  I’ve learned from my granddaughter that it takes 60 seconds for a Sleeping Beauty tattoo to adhere to my skin and six weeks for it to wear off.  I’ve also learned if you let go of a Dora balloon in a Walmart parking lot, the helium inside will propel the balloon up and out of reach at warp speed.  And, after watching a few melt-downs, I’ve learned that every action has an equal and opposite over-reaction.
Sometimes, it’s not what you know but if you can make the information sound believable. I heard a segment on HLN this week called Liar, Liar.  Viewers were invited to tweet Robin Meade the lies their mothers had told them as children.  The most memorable was the one a mom told her kids to keep them at her side in busy parking lots.  She told them the greasy spots in the parking lot were little kids who let go of their mother’s hand.
I’m going to share with you the most valuable information I’ve ever been given.  It comes from the mouth of the astronaut, Chris Hatfield.  He said, “There is no problem so bad that you can’t make it worse.”  I’ve proven this concept over and over.  One of my life goals is to one day be smart enough or mature enough or whatever enough to make a bad situation better, not worse.  I’ll let you know if I ever get there.