Kavya, reading Lumberjanes: “It is *so* obvious that the head of the scout troop is evil!”
Mommy: “You are a smartypants.”
Anand chiming in: “Make sure you don’t cut yourself!”
I cracked up, because earlier this week, I explained to Kavya the saying, “She’s so sharp she cut herself.” Because Kavya has a bit of a tendency towards smart-aleck comments, hair-splitting arguments, etc. She is setting up nicely to be on the debate team or go to law school (like Kevin’s parents before her). And it’s all well and good, but sometimes she gets argumentative in ways that upset Anand. So I was trying to point out that just because you think of something super-clever to say, you might want to pause and think about whether it’s nice to say it. Anand, of course, was delighted to have his tends-to-behave-perfectly sister get a little parental feedback. But I hadn’t realized that he loved it enough that he’d internalized the entire logic of the argument.
Whew. That took a lot of explaining, and probably wasn’t as funny to the rest of you as it was to me. Ah well.
Hair-splitting arguments…a young mathematician!!