“Dad, is your shadow always to the your East side?”
Talk about a question out of the blue. They’d just finished they’re swimming lesson and had come back for a drink and a snack before spending some play time in the water. I was busy reading Under the Dome, Stephen King’s latest, and had to perform a quick mental inventory.
Frankly, I wasn’t sure how he got the “East” part correct, but he did. Questions like these can be irritating- they’re so random that’s it’s impossible to perform any kind of forensic work to figure out what drives it. He could have asked “Why isn’t gorilla fur pink?” and I would’ve reacted about the same.
But then, I realized a possible way to make this more interesting. At least, for me that is. Since there aren’t any instructions I’ve been given on how to answer random-question-from-7-year-olds, I figured I had nothing to lose.
I worked up a, hopefully, simple progression of questions to guide him towards his own answer. Then, I began.
“Well, what makes your shadow?”
He was sucking on his water at that moment. The lass loves to jump in on stuff like this and she didn’t disappoint here.
“Your body,” she answered.
“Close, what else do you need?” I replied.
“The Sun,” they answered in unison.
“Right. OK, if your shadow is to the East, then where does the Sun have to be?”
This one was going to be tricky. They know the cardinal directions, but applying it in this manner might still be above their pay grade. I figured the boy had a shot at getting it right.
Unfortunately, neither of the quite grasped what I was after.
“Over there,” the boy answered, pointing at the Sun. Right technically, but not a help with where I was trying to steer them.
“In the sky” blurted the lass, seizing a moment where she might be right and her brother not-so-much. Again, points for technical correctness but not the answer I sought.
“Well, yes. But what direction? If the East is over here,” I pointed in the direction of his shadow, “then what direction is that?” I pointed in the opposite direction back towards the Sun.
“NORTH! SOUTH! EAST! UP! LEFT!”
They were spitting answers at my faster than a gatling gun on an A-10 shoots depleted uranium slugs. They also kept skipping the one direction that was correct. I think they’d decided that if I wasn’t going to make it easy and just answer their question, they’d return the favor. In spades.
I opted to cut to the chase: “No- that’s West, right? The Sun has to be to your West in order to make your shadow on the East. It has to be over there [me, pointing], the West, to make a shadow over here [me, more pointing], the East. Does that make sense?”
The lass then attempted to hijack the conversation, “So the North is in that direction, right?” She was pointing to the South. I nearly face-palmed with a Homer-ific “DOH!”
Now I was pointing each of the four directions and the whole thing was dangerously close to coming off the rails. After a quick refresher on what direction was where, I jumped back on the original train of thought and repeated my previous query: whether it made sense that in order for their shadow to be to the East, the Sun had to be to the West.
They nodded. I don’t know if they really got it or were just trying to move things along. In retrospect, I probably could’ve pop-quizzed them a bit, but in the moment I figured they were almost at the point where they’d forgotten the original question. I moved on to the exciting conclusion.
“So, the Sun is in the West right now. Your original question was you wanted to know if your ‘shadow was always to the East.’ If your shadow is always to the East, and the Sun causes your shadow, then the Sun has to always be to the West, right? [them nodding] So, is the Sun always in the West? Does the Sun stay still in the West?”
I added that last bit as a deliberate ploy to help them get it. They both know the Sun moves during the day. It worked.
“No” the boy answered for both of them.
“Right, so is your shadow always in the East?” I finished.
“No.” The final answer was flat, silently implying All that when all you had to do was say ‘No.’?
They finished up their drinks and ran back to the pond for some more swimming. Leaving me to ponder if they’d understood anything, and whether it had been worth it. Ever since they were small, the Wife and I have always taken the tact that we’d answer their questions if we knew the answers, as opposed to brushing them off. Ultimately, they’ve become question asking machines and as they’ve grown, we’ve both become weary of a great number of their questions.
The fact is many of their questions they themselves could answer if they stopped and thought about it for a moment or two. At least, that’s how it seems to me. I often wonder if we’d stunted their resourcefulness by trying to be their Google/Internet. But then, observing their peers, I see the same inability to use reasoning and deduction, even in the simplest cases. I know, it’s the age. But still, I’d like to see some sign of progress. The Wife tells me I expect too much from them for their age. Maybe so, but I am what I am.
On the way home, the boy asked “Dad, what direction are we going to get home?” At least this one wasn’t out-of-the-blue random.
I looked at him and thought about the Sun, the shadows and our earlier conversation. I took a deep breath.
“South.” I answered.