Beachin' 2

When I read the Beachin' posting to my husband, he asked, "Did you tell that story about ...?" So here's the sequel.

The story Adam wanted me to tell was this: he and my mother went to the fish store (with Miranda) to get some fish (what else?) They got some Wahoo (the idea of cooking and chewing up a Wahoo was definitely too great a chance for a former Hokie to miss), but figuring that the kids wouldn't eat that, Adam also got them some shrimp. Miranda looked at the shrimp and asked, "What's that?" Adam said, "They're shrimp!" Then, feeling a little playful, he added, "You know, little fish for little kids." Miranda gave him a disparaging look and said, "Dad, shrimp aren't fish, they're Crustaceans!"

On the way to the beach, Xavier felt obliged to point out every water tower he saw. At one point, there was a water tower next to a clover-leaf exit we had to take. Xavier chanted from the backseat, "Look, Mom! There's a water tower! And another water tower! And ANOTHER water tower!"

At the same exit, Miranda expressed an interest in using the restroom, so we stopped at a Red Apple gas station. I filled up the van while Adam took the kids to the rest room. The flourescent lighting was going out, so evidently there was some kind of disco effect going on in there. Now, this is our very first week-long trip to the Outer Banks with the kids, yet when Miranda looked up at the flickering light, she said, "I sure hope they fix that light before we come through next year." Already a tradition ...

Okay, this last story requires a little background. My father-in-law is a well-known laser physicist. One of his sons is an electrical engineer, and his other two children majored in Biology; one of them works in Pharmaceuticals and the other works in the genetics lab at Duke. To protect the identities of my children, we are going to pretend that his name is "Dr. Jones" (no, not Indiana.)

When we arrived at my brother-in-law's house to spend the night on the way back home, his wife's parents were there for our niece's baptism. After the kids went to bed, we discussed this, that, and the other, and the subject turned to that of the children. After an amusing anecdote about Riley and golf, I said, "You know, I find it interesting ... Miranda is obsessed with dinosaurs -- she can tell us almost any detail we could want to know about dinosaurs, she writes stories and songs about dinosaurs, and when you ask her what she wants to be when she grows up, she says she wants to be a paleontologist. Riley is obsessed with astronomy, and he knows more about planets than I do. Then there's Xavier -- he is obsessed with Thomas the Tank Engine. He wants to be a (railway) engineer, he talks about writing Thomas stories when he grows up ..." My sister-in-law's mother commented, "Of course, you realize that he's the normal one of the three." My brother-in-law sighed and said, "Yes, it appears that Miranda and Riley have been afflicted with the recessive Jones Science gene."