My five-year old hit me with a surprise quiz the other day. “Do you know why the e at the end of a word changes the sound of the other vowels?” he asked.
I didn’t, but that didn’t seem like a very Daddy answer.
“Why don’t you tell me?” I said.
“’cause it’s angry they won’t let it make a sound.” He gestured with his hands. ”It’s not a silent e,” he said. “It’s an angry e. So it changes the way the others sound. ”
Makes sense to me. If someone made me stay silent, I’d be mad too.
When I took the kids grocery shopping the other Saturday, they noticed the little plastic desk holding the lottery forms and asked about it.
“Well,” I said. “It’s called a lottery. It’s like a contest. Everyone picks a bunch of numbers and whoever picks the right ones gets millions of dollars.”
“So?” My five year old asked.
“Millions of dollars,” I explained, “would change our life. We’d be able to do a lot more to help other people, and I wouldn’t have to spend nearly as much time working.”
They liked that idea, so we filled out a couple lottery tickets and bought them.
We checked the numbers the next morning to see if we won. We didn’t.
“It’s okay Daddy,” my five-year old said. He patted my hand. “Our life is pretty good the way it is.”
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“Daddy, Daddy!” my five-year old called. He was in the bathroom, just getting out of the shower. I was in his room, getting him a clean pair of pajamas.
“Yes?”
“Come here! I have something to show you.”
“Okay,” I dropped his clean pjs on his bed, but only made two steps towards the bathroom before he poked his head out of the door.
“Wait a minute. It’s a secret. Can you keep a secret?”
“Sure.”
“Even from momma?”
Hmm… “Well,” I said. “I’ll try, but I might have to tell her, depending on what it is.”
He didn’t answer.
“Sorry about that,” I said. “But I might.”
“Okay,” he said seriously. “Then I better keep it to myself.”
And he closed the door.
I snuck around later to try and see if I could discover the secret, but no luck. I’ll never know whatever it was he had wanted to show me.