Saturday, January 30, 2010

Fun at the dinner table


I made pasta for dinner tonight. In the middle of the meal, I heard a strange sound. My 8-year-old was blowing through one of the thick, tubular, penne noodles. It sounded just like a whistle.

Before I could stop myself, I asked, "How did you do that?"

I found a sauceless noodle of my own and tried blowing through it. When it didn't whistle, I thought out loud, "I wonder what will happen when I poke it with my fork?"

When I was done, my noodle looked vaguely like a tiny, fat clarinet. I proceeded to blow through it while covering the new holes with my fingers. (It still didn't whistle, BTW. I think Kerm had a special noodle!)

At this point, everyone at the table -- Itinerant Cryptographer, Kerm, Little Brother, me -- was blowing through a noodle. (Princess just stared at us.) I looked up, aghast, at what I had started.

"All right, everyone," I said. "These are the last noodles that we're blowing. Put your food back on your plates and let's eat like civilized people."

My husband looked at me and smiled. "Your inner scientist is in conflict with your inner mom."

I had to agree. But once in awhile, you just have to use your noodle.


Photo credit: babbagecabbage through a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license via flickr.

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