History is effortless

Posted under A Geek Dad's Life, Blog Posts, Uncategorized

My wife and I share the bedtime responsibilities in the house.  Every alternating evening, I read stories to my kids, turn off the lights, and have some quiet/quality time with them before they go to sleep.  This is my chance to recap the day, resolve the day’s happenings, and answer the “daddy questions” like “who made up all of the languages on the Earth?”

So tonight, I described linguistic divergence (i.e. romance languages), and other forms of linguistic speciation to my 7 year-old.  It took all of 20 seconds, and my daughter totally grok’d it.  Then, she asked me what “history” was.

I told her:

“History is tonight.  History is 20 years from now when you’ll be telling your friends about June 12th, 2008, the night you asked your dad ‘who made up all of the languages on the Earth?’”

“You are making history just by being here.  Imagine what kind of history you could make if you tried.”