Have you ever heard of Cucumber Sandwich popcorn?Yeah, me neither. But a local popcorn place here in Northwest Indiana devised this salty, dilly, delicious concoction to which I am addicted. I like salty, savory snacks, so maybe it’s no surprise that I’m such a big fan of the Cucumber Sandwich flavor.However, I think part of the reason I like it has to do with something I’ve been thinking about recently.For last night’s Blogapalooz-Hour challenge I wrote a post about missing yesterday. In writing the post, I thought of some things that I hadn’t thought about for quite some time.Usually when a latent memory surfaces it’s not because I’ve requested it. Rare are the moments when I, or anyone else for that matter, can sit down and think, “Bring me back to a summer day in 1997 when I owned that blue Pontiac Grand Prix.”Instead, we’re transported back to that day when A Long December by Counting Crows comes on the radio.Why is that?The power of smells, sounds and tastes to instantly transport us back to some moment is thrilling.The first time I tasted Cucumber Sandwich popcorn I immediately thought of eating a Steak ‘n Shake steakburger one late Friday night in the backseat of our family’s station wagon in the late 1980s. How did I get there?At the time there was no Steak ‘n Shake near our home, and my dad loves that restaurant. So every time we went to visit my grandparents—which was usually on a weekend, and often on Fridays after my mom got home from work—we’d stop at Steak ‘n Shake near there.And it turns out that the Cucumber Sandwich popcorn—maybe it’s the dill—tastes just like the pickles from a Steak ‘n Shake steakburger.It works with smells too.We didn’t see my other grandparents as often since they lived in New York. However, I have vivid memories of a particular smell from their basement. I asked my grandpa about this smell one time while he was visiting us in Illinois, and he said it was a bug repellent plant that my grandma bought.I’ve tried to track down this smell, but I’ve never succeeded. Ask me to describe the smell, and I’ll fail completely. But put me within 300 yards of a single particle of that fragrance and I’ll identify it instantly and be taken to a place 900 miles away and 25 years ago.Chocolate chip cookies, sage Thanksgiving stuffing, a certain unidentified floral scent, and freshly cut grass all have unique olfactory powers over me.Perhaps the most intense power of recall is attributable to music. I could probably write three or four separate posts entirely about songs that take me to certain places.A short selection:This incredible ham commercial song takes me back to being up late one night when I was a kid.Livin’ on a Prayer brings me back to my mom’s cousin’s house on Long Island and listening to Slippery When Wet on vinyl with his huge headphones.Two Princes by the Spin Doctors is a 1985 Dodge Daytona.Counting Blue Cars is hanging out at Valparaiso University one rainy afternoon while I was still in high school.I Try by Macy Gray is driving to Cleveland in a Chevy Lumina.I could go on and on, but these are my songs and my memories, and I’m getting tired from all of this bouncing around in time and place. You probably have your own memories and other songs, tastes and smells associated with them.You might not think you do, but you do. Because years go by and we change, and the world around us changes, but the songs, the smells and the tastes remain the same.And our brains are capable of performing wondrous things, like storing away memories without our knowledge.Then one day a song comes on the radio, or we taste a certain ingredient, or we smell a particular particle, and the memory returns. We’re in a different time. We’re in a different place.And we hadn’t even planned to leave.By the way, if you like what you're reading here, you should like my Facebook page, Brett Baker Writes.Type your email address in the box and click the "create subscription" button. My list is completely spam free, and you can opt out at any time.
What I Miss the Most
One hour. Write about a person, place or thing that I miss.There are plenty of people I could write about, and I’ve traveled and moved enough that I’m sure I could think of a place that I miss.Turns out what I miss the most is a thing: yesterday.
I’m 13,250 days old. That’s a lot of yesterdays. Which means a lot of things to miss. I’m a rather nostalgic fellow, so I think of yesterday quite often. I think of things I did, I think of places I’ve gone, I think of people I’ve lost.None of them are more important than any other. They’ve all brought me to this date. They’ve all made me the guy sitting in front of a screen, moving his fingers and using just twenty-six letters to write some (interesting?) things.What are these things?Singing the theme song to The Courtship of Eddie’s Father with my mom.Listening to the Mike Shannon show on KMOX radio on Saturday mornings with my dad.The smell of crayons in the hallways of Carl Sandburg elementary school.Going to the summer movie camp on the other side of town with my sisters.Spending the night at my grandparents’ house and hearing the newspaper delivery man actually open the front door to the house at six o’clock in the morning to throw the paper in.My first Cubs game at Wrigley Field, sitting in the upper deck, and going down to box seats after the game so my dad could show us the field.The sense of wonder upon arriving in New York City after dark to visit my other grandparents.Taping coins to railroad tracks to see how flat they’d get.Dirt trails.A creepy stuffed clown with long arms, a pointy hat and hands with Velcro on them.Spending entire Saturdays at the Little League baseball field, playing baseball, watching my friends play, and giving myself a stomachache eating Chocolate Colonel Crunch Bars.Worrying whether Hulk Hogan will retain the WWF Championship.Eating at a Pizza Hut in Denver, Colorado.Standing in the back of a silver Nissan pickup, driving down a country road, screaming the lyrics to Tahitian Moon by Porno for Pyros.Skipping astronomy class to learn the lyrics to It’s the End of the World as We Know It.Jumping on the beds in a Motel 6 in Burlington, Vermont.Driving my girlfriend (now wife) home at eleven thirty at night, on snow covered roads, and hitting every red light along the way.Catching five fish in five minutes with my oldest daughter after not catching any for fifty-five minutes.Trivial Pursuit outside on the deck on a January night in Tennessee.The Little Log Chapel.The NICU nurse telling me my son began breathing on his own.My son laying on the floor, absorbing sunshine and knowing his liver was just fine.My daughter chewing on her fist before the cord was even cut.Pearl Jam. Alpine Valley.Climbing rocks at Joshua Tree.Man, going back and reading all of these things makes me ridiculously nostalgic. Maybe even sad.Luckily, two things are sure to counteract the sadness of missing yesterday.Today and Tomorrow.By the way, if you like what you're reading here, you should like my Facebook page, Brett Baker Writes.Type your email address in the box and click the "create subscription" button. My list is completely spam free, and you can opt out at any time.
Please Quit Saying That! Part One
It’s said that Shakespeare used around 17,677 different words in his writings. About one-tenth of those words, somewhere around 1,700, had never been seen before. Little Willie Shakespeare just made them up. And these aren’t obscure words that you’ve never heard before. You’ve probably used some of them today and not even realized that they first came from the pen of the Bard of Avon.Some words that Shakespeare invented: critical, gust, hint, countless, castigate, majestic, laughable, hurry and courtship. How would we describe some bloggers if he didn’t give us rant? And I’d like to personally thank him for one of my favorites: zany. And another that I’m a big fan of: undress.
We use some of those words so often that they’re critical (see?) to our language.
Of course Shakespeare isn’t the only one who has influenced the language. Ninety percent of the words he used were invented by someone else. So I realize that the way we speak and write is constantly changing. Languages evolve by adding new words, losing others, and finding new meanings and ways to use words and phrases. I get it.
However, for some reason that makes it no less irritating to me to hear how some words and phrases are used.
I’ve noticed over the past couple of years that the words really and seriously have become exclamations when used alone, instead of questions. And they’re never spoken in response to words, but instead are used when responding to actions. So when my youngest son spills the tea when he’s pouring it into his glass, my oldest daughter cries out, “Really!” Although if I wanted to properly punctuate it I’d write “Really!?” since it’s part exclamation, and part question.
A quick check of the Oxford English Dictionary and Thesaurus.com show no relation between really and seriously, but they’re used interchangeably. If a seriously/really overuser hails a cab and a guy steps in front at the last minute and sits in the cab, the overuser is just as likely to exclaim “Really!?” as “Seriously!?” I suppose it’s just an expression of disbelief, but if you want to annoy those who overuse either expression, it’s fun to respond to their question.
“Really!?”
“No, pretend!”
Or, “Seriously!?”
“No, I’m kidding.”
Just be sure to duck because overusers aren’t likely to see the humor in your reply.
Much to my delight, “Really!?” and “Seriously!?” will eventually wane in popularity. That seems to be what happened with “I know, right?” and the shortened, simpler, “Right?”
Around this time last year it became almost impossible to have a conversation with some people without their response to every sentence being “I know, right?”
“I think this salsa is too spicy.”
“I know, right?”
Or, “I wish that cheesecake was an acceptable breakfast food.”
“I know, right?”
At some point, the “I know” disappeared from the phrase, and it just became “Right?”
“McDonald’s hamburgers smell better than they taste.”
“Right?”
I’ve looked for differences between “I know, right?” and “Right?” but they seem to be used interchangeably, and they’re almost never necessary. If someone says something I agree with, I prefer, “I think so too,” or “You’re right.” No need to respond to my statement with a question. I just told you what I think, why are you asking me if what I think is actually what I think?
“I know, right?” is almost as fun to mock as “Really!?” and “Seriously!?” though. When my oldest daughter employs “I know, right?”—which, in her defense, she does much less frequently than she used to—I love nothing more than to respond in my best valley girl voice with “IK,R?”
Sounded out that’s “I K comma R question mark” The fun of that almost outweighs the annoyance.
I feel like there’s more to say on this topic, but I like to keep these posts somewhat short, so I’ll continue next time with part two. However, if you read that last sentence carefully you’ll get a preview of the next annoying phrase on my radar. And if none of this makes sense to you, then you’re the person using these phrases too much.
Seriously.
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How to Tell the Difference Between Kids and Dogs
I like dogs. I understand why people have dogs for pets and why people love their dogs so much.
That being said, I’m still amazed at the phenomenon of people referring to dogs as their kids. It seems like almost every dog owner that I’ve ever met has done this.
If you refer to your dog as your kid because you feel a deep emotional attachment to him, or he seems like part of your family, or you appreciate the dog’s loyalty, then great. I’m happy you feel that way. Refer to your dog as your kid all you want. (I’m sure you’re thrilled to have my blessing!)
However, if you refer to your dog as your kid because you genuinely can’t tell the difference, then I’m here to help!
Here are some tips that should assist you in telling the difference between Fido and your kid (unless your kid’s name is Fido, but that’s a different post):
1. A kid won’t sniff a person’s crotch the first time he meets them.
2. If a kid is dragging its butt across the carpet, it’s probably because she hasn’t yet learned to walk, not because of an irritated anal sac.
3. When your kid kisses you, it’s not right after he licked his butt.
4. Kids and dogs might both eat from a bowl, and they might both make a mess. So that’s not a good tip. However, keep in mind that it’s okay for the dog to eat any food the kid drops. It’s not okay for the kid to eat any food the dog drops.
5. Bob Barker has no opinion as to whether you circumcise your kid.
6. If you let your kid hang his head out the window while you drive, you’ll probably get arrested.
7. It’s not acceptable to put a lice collar on your kid.
8. You probably won’t think it’s adorable if your kid hops up on your bed and sleeps on your head.
9. Your kid will become self-sufficient…eventually.
10. Kid smiles aren’t creepy.
11. Your kid knows he can’t catch a squirrel.
12. When a dog hugs your leg it’s not because he’s shy or scared.
13. A kid wears a costume because he wants to; a dog wears a costume because you want him to.
14. Your kid’s food didn’t smell the same when he ate it as it does when it’s coming out.
15. Kids won’t drink from a toilet.
16. A kid will chew on her feet, a dog will chew on your shoes. *Note: Only babies should chew on their feet. I have no tip if your eight-year-old is chewing on her feet or her shoes.
17. Kids smell the same whether wet or dry.Obviously there are probably exceptions to the tips above, but they’re really just a matter of degrees. For instance, my kids have run after squirrels in the mistaken belief that they would catch them. That might lead you to believe that my kids are dogs.
Au contraire.
When the squirrel runs away—say, up a tree—my kids will realize the squirrel is gone and move on to something else. If they were dogs they would run to the tree, stand at the bottom and bark for ten minutes. Are they expressing disappointment that the squirrel got away? Are they demanding that the squirrel come back down and meet its fate?
Your guess is as good as mine.
So you’ll have my little cheat sheet for the next time you have to tell the difference between a kid and a dog. I hope it’s helpful. It’s obviously not all encompassing, and perhaps some of these rules don’t apply to your dog, or your kid.
But come on, I think we can all agree that dog smiles are creepy.
By the way, if you happen to have a young goat for a pet, feel free to call that your kid.
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It's More than just Picking your Own Food
There are few things as basic and essential to human life as food. Another basic need is family. So it makes sense that when you combine food and family great things happen.Much has been made in recent years about the importance of families eating dinner together. It provides a chance for everyone to come together, talk about their day, and interact with each other.The other part of dinner time that has been the focus of millions of words over the past few years is the desire for people to know where their food comes from. The local food movement continues to grow, and thankfully farmer’s markets are sprouting up in towns across the country. It’s probably easier to find local food today than in any time since the disastrous western industrial food era began.Today I enjoyed one of my favorite family activities, and it just so happens to involve food.We went raspberry picking.
If you’ve never gone to a farm and picked your own food, you’re really missing out. Backyard gardens are fantastic, and provide the same type of benefit, but they also require a fair amount of talent, patience and commitment. We’re more than a century removed from the time when most people grew their own food, and we’ll never return to those days. But picking your food at a local farm is the next best thing.Luckily, u-pick is becoming more popular as the local food movement grows. My family and I make frequent trips to Garwood Orchard, a family farm in LaPorte that’s been farming for six generations. Despite the name, Garwood offers much more than apples.Our trips to Garwood begin in early June with the strawberry harvest. Next up are blueberries, raspberries, pickles, green beans, bell peppers and hot peppers. And that’s all before apple picking season even begins! In addition to the seventeen different varieties of apples available throughout September and October there’s also tomatoes, tomatillos, and eggplant. There are more pumpkins and squash than you can shake a stick at. Unfortunately, Mother Nature ruined this year’s cherry, nectarine, peach and plum u-pick crops.Incredible things happen on our outings to pick our own food. When kids see where the food comes from, they’re enthusiastic about it. Most kids have never seen cherries hanging from a tree, or a bush so full of raspberries that the branches are hanging down toward the ground. And they’ll never have green beans as tasty as the ones they picked from the plant.We’ve become so separated from our food sources that it’s easy to forget how those pickles ended up in the jar, or that pizza sauce doesn’t magically appear in a sealed can. Going out to the field and seeing the vines, bushes, and trees on which these fruits and vegetables grow, looking at the flowers that will become fruit, tasting the freshness of something attached to a plant until you picked it and put in your mouth, reminds us just how basic to our existence our food is.Or how basic it should be.While we meandered the acres of berries, peppers and pickles today, crews of workers bent over and harvested the same fruits and vegetables that we picked. There’s a market at Garwood that sells produce already picked for you.It occurred to me that a cynic might laugh at us for essentially paying Garwood to allow us to work for them. However, even if we didn’t pay less for the u-pick items than the items in the market—which we do—I wouldn’t mind. Getting into the fields, seeing the plants, feeling the sunshine, and hearing the still silence of a rural farm is worth something.And teaching my kids that those apples they love so much actually began as buds before becoming flowers, and then small apples, is worth something. Letting them experience the sometimes-difficult work of picking enough raspberries to fill a container is worth something. Teaching them the difference between bell peppers that are ripe versus those that need a few more days is worth something. Teaching them the proper way to pick an apple without damaging a branch is worth something.Reminding them of the importance of our food and not to take it for granted is worth something.But the experience of doing it together, as a family, is priceless.How about you get an e-mail every time I write one of these things? Enter your e-mail address and click the "create subscription" button. My list is completely spam free, and you can opt out at any time.
In Defense of Running Out of Gas, Repeatedly
I have run out of gas eight times. I think. There are eight times that I remember, and that’s the number that I usually mention when telling my running out of gas stories, but it might actually be more than that.Yes, I have running out of gas stories. Don’t you? It’s not just me, is it?A quick internet search revealed a post on the popular Freakonomics blog called “Why Don’t People Run out of Gas Anymore?”So maybe it is just me. And come to think of it, the only other running out of gas story I recall hearing is from my dad. So maybe it’s hereditary. (Sorry, kids!)Anyway, before you think that I’m a complete nincompoop, let me explain.It all started in high school. The high school parking lot, to be exact. I’d been driving my dad’s beatup 1978 Chevy Caprice for a few days. The thing was huge. My friends and I used to pile six of us in there. Comfortably. It had plenty of room. It also had a large hole in the floorboard, which meant that I could see the road pass beneath me as I drove.What it didn’t have was a working gas gauge. So when it stalled after school one day, I immediately knew the problem. And when I looked down at the gas gauge the needle rested on E, just as it always did.And that’s when I learned one of the bedrock lessons of my life: gas gauges can’t be trusted.That needle rested on empty every single time I got into the car. How the hell am I supposed to know when the thing’s really empty and when it’s just pulling my leg? I’d pour twenty gallons of gas into its cavernous tank, and still the gauge would taunt me with the needle resting on E, as if to say, “Give me more!”“Well that was five or six cars ago! What’s your excuse now?” a skeptical reader might ask.And to that reader I’d say that a working gas gauge is not much better.Automakers try to fool us into thinking we can trust the gauge. They’ve gone and made it digital on some cars, as if disappearing LED bars are more reliable than a needle. Or even worse, they’ve included the deceitful, “Miles to Empty” calculation on my minivan’s dashboard.I’d like automakers to explain to me how I had 357 miles to empty after I filled up, then drove 80 miles, and now only have 263 miles to empty. Are some miles longer than others?Since gas gauges are unreliable, deceitful, and enjoy mocking me, I treat them the same way I’d treat a person with similar characteristics: I ignore them!And what happens most of the time? Nothing.Not a damn thing happens because the gas gauge is lying when it says that the tank is empty. There’s more gas in there. Automakers tried to get around this inconvenient truth by adding a warning light, which just proves my point. If the gauge were accurate, we wouldn’t need a light, would we?The warning light’s no better though. The “Check Gauges” or “Low Fuel” or, my favorite, the picture of a gas pump, all light up as if to say, “You’re low on fuel, and I mean it this time.”Yeah, yeah, yeah. Go suck on a gas pump.Maybe I’d take these things more seriously if there was some universal standard by which they operated. If automakers would agree that the light would come on when one gallon of gas remained, fine. SUV owners would know to rush to a gas station, and Prius owners would know they could only drive for another week before filling up.That’s not going to happen though. There’s no uniformity in the world of gas gauges. E doesn’t really mean Empty. It means something more like Almost Empty. If it meant Empty then the needle should never pass it, should it?So until there are better gas gauges, I’ll continue to ignore them. Sure, maybe I’ll run out of gas again, but I’m happy to report that the last three times I ran out of gas I was able to coast to a gas station, so I’m not too worried about it.Besides, running out of gas makes for good stories.Type your email address in the box and click the "create subscription" button. My list is completely spam free, and you can opt out at any time.
Can’t Do it Yourself? Just Hire Someone Younger!
The phone rang and I heard my wife’s voice on the other end of the line. “Something’s wrong with Trevor’s car.” Trevor is our seventeen-year-old daughter’s boyfriend.“It’s the starter. Or the radiator. Or the alternator. Is that a thing? An alternator. I mean, I know it’s a thing, but is it something on a car?” (One of my wife’s endearing qualities is her complete disinterest in cars. I could never have married a woman who’s into cars. I don’t know why. I just couldn’t. I dated a woman who was into cars. It didn’t work.)The problem with Trevor’s car didn’t really matter, but it brought her to the main reason for her phone call. “He’s trying to earn some extra money to fix it, so I was thinking I’d have him clean out our gutters.”“That’s a good idea,” I said without thinking. We discussed how much to pay him, settled on a price, and hung up.The gravity of the conversation didn’t hit me until much later:I’d become the guy who used to do things for himself, but now has to have a younger guy take care of it.A few short years ago I was the guy out there on the big extension ladder, sticking my hand in all sorts of stinky, organic muck and flinging it into a garbage can on the ground.(Two side notes here: 1. There’s no smell worse than rotting gutter vegetation. Try as you may that smell isn’t coming off your hands for days. And try explaining to Bob in the next cubicle that the stench he’s been complaining about all morning is coming from your hands. 2. Someone should invent an easy way to dispose of all that gross gutter goop. It’s practically impossible to accurately heave it all into the grounded garbage can from fifteen feet in the air, and you risk a broken neck if you try to bring a garbage bag onto the ladder with you. There’s a Shark Tank pitch there somewhere.)But now my wife had suggested, and I agreed, to pay a kid less than half my age to do it for me. Tell me I shouldn’t worry that this is the beginning of the end!I like to think of myself as a handy guy. I can fix most things that go wrong around the house, and many things that go wrong with the car. In fact, I’m good enough that relatives have actually called me to fix things for them.And clearing leaves from a gutter is precisely the sort of home maintenance chore that falls to the man of the house. I’m not one of those macho guys known to drone on about being the king of the castle or the man in charge or whatever, but letting this kid come over and clean out the gutters feels a little bit like I’m surrendering the helm of the ship.Today it’s the gutters, but what’s next? Cutting the grass? Killing spiders? Carving the Thanksgiving turkey?My wife has always preferred that we have someone else clean out the gutters. And she has a point. They’re high off the ground. I have to climb an impressive ladder to reach them, and the job is usually done in the fall or early spring, when the weather is crappy and the risk of a catastrophic fall is high.It’s also possible that I wouldn’t have given this a second thought had I not noticed that I’m a little older than I used to be. I’m only thirty-six, which isn’t old. But it’s not eighteen, either. Things are creakier and a little more sore than they used to be.The other way to look at it is that we’ve come to the point where we’re adult enough to actually pay someone to do something that we don’t want to do. That’s a common goal of everyone growing up isn’t it? In grade school you wished you could pay someone to eat your veggies, or in high school you wished you could pay someone to take that test for you. After college you might have paid someone to find a job for you. And now, I’m paying someone to clean my gutters.I can still take care of the spiders though.Like my Facebook page, Brett Baker Writes. Do it. Now. Please. You can also type your email address in the box and click the "create subscription" button. My list is completely spam free, and you can opt out at any time.
Dry it in the Water Makes More Sense After you Learn It
One of us has a new blog and like “they” always say, it’s not you, it’s me. So welcome to my new (emphasis on "new" there, since this ain't my first rodeo, bloggishly-speaking) blog, Dry it in the Water.Words of wisdom are priceless, so I’m looking forward to sharing some things that I’ve learned, both as a person and as a parent. Not that parents aren’t people and vice versa.Oh, wait a minute, I’m confusing words of wisdom with the Mona Lisa. It’s the Mona Lisa that’s priceless. Words of wisdom are sometimes annoying, often self-serving, and usually unwelcome. But still, they’re offered up non-stop as if they’re worth something, so I might as well add my voice to the crowd. (And by the way, given a good set of watercolors, I’m pretty sure I could do better than the Mona Lisa as well.)If you can’t figure out what Dry it in the Water means, don’t worry, you’re not alone. It’s the name of my blog and I’m not entirely sure I know what it means. But, since every blog needs a story, here’s the story of this here blog.Rewind to a few weeks ago, when we still had hopes of having an actual summer, and not this upper-70s, low-80s, half-hearted attempt at summer. I was swimming at the beach with my family—because nothing says summer more than wading into 55-degree water and freezing my ass off, while becoming Mr. Hyde if someone splashes so much as a drop of that shrinkage-inducing water on my still-warm upper body—when my youngest daughter, Girl’10 (her gender and year of birth, FYI), started complaining about her feet being too sandy. After trying to explain to her that people quite often end up with sandy feet when they go to a beach with trillions of grains of sand, I suggested that she put her feet in the lake to rinse them. So she did.The water did its trick and washed the sand right off. (Good thing she couldn’t see the countless bits of God-knows-what that probably attached to her feet courtesy of Lake Michigan.) Another problem quickly arose when she discovered that although her feet no longer had sand on them, they were wet.Now, wet feet at a beach might not seem like a big deal to you, but to Girl’10 there are few things more repulsive than wetness. I subscribe to the paper-towels-are-the-Devil theory, and I’ve been successful in brainwashing my two sons to believe the same. But Girl’10 apparently doesn’t fall for cultish ideas and refuses to see the light. God forbid I have even a drop of water remaining on my hands after washing them and wiping them on my pants to dry. If I try to hold her hand, Girl’10 will admonish me, “Daddy, your hands are still wet,” and then pull her hand away faster than Teddy Duchamp’s ear. (I know I’m stretching it with that reference, but look it up.) Then I have to not only dry my hands, but make sure to get the four drops of water off of her hand.So to her, wet feet at the beach are a beach. My wife, in her ability to somehow instantly cure whatever ails any one of our children, suggests that Girl’10 dry her feet with a towel. This sounds like a perfectly reasonable suggestion to me, in spite of the fact that she’s going to have sandy feet again a few minutes later and the process might begin anew. Girl’10 had other plans though. Instead of drying her feet with the towel, she says, “No, momma, I’ll just go dry them in the water.”Girl’10 goes to the water, dips her feet in, comes back, and is perfectly content.That’s bizarre enough, but shortly thereafter she wants to clean her sand toys, so she tells us, “I’m going to go dry these in the water,” and toddles away, while singing a little diddy, “Dry it in the Water,” which is sung to a song I’d never heard of until my wife told me about it, “Mermaid” by Train. Dry it in the Water has been in her repertoire ever since.Of course, being a thinking adult with a rudimentary understanding of chemistry and thermodynamics, I had no idea I could dry anything in the water. But now I know. And so do you.Those are the kinds of things I learn.If you like what you've read, type your email address in the box and click the "create subscription" button. My list is completely spam free, and you can opt out at any time.