7 Quick Takes about Moose Safety, Shades of White, and Worship Songs about the House Burning Down

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?

—1—

I said to Phillip one morning, "You know what's ironic?"

Like any reasonable person who was a teenager in the 90s, he replied, "10,000 spoons when all you need is a knife?"

"No," I said. "I finally decided it was time to clean my dirty phone. I couldn't find the cleaner so I had to go get some from the upstairs bathroom. Then there were no paper towels so I had to go down to the basement to get another roll. I cleaned off the phone, put everything away, and then set it down on the counter in a big glob of peanut butter."

"Well, at least you have paper towels now," was his response.

—2—

My 15-year-old learned in his driver's ed class what to do if a moose "jumps out" in front of your car. (I've never seen a moose jump, but that's how my son described it to me.)

Apparently, they covered all sorts of scenarios and if you can't avoid the moose altogether, you should try to swerve so the corner of your car takes the impact and the moose doesn't go through the windshield.

I don't remember ever talking about anything like that in driver's ed and wondered if this was a routine thing or if maybe my son just got the rogue driving instructor who was obsessed with moose safety. I decided to text his older sister to ask:

Har, har. Look who got their dad's sense of humor.

—3—

Since I got back from my Mexico trip I've been more determined to practice my Spanish conversational skills (they're even worse than my English conversational skills, and that's saying something). So I've been back on my language exchange app, meeting Spanish speakers who are trying to learn English so we can help each other.

I always realize things about English when I'm talking to them. One guy was asking me about the difference between "I will" and "I'm going to." We talked about it and then I told him that most English speakers pronounce "I'm going to" like "I'm gunna" in case he ever hears that in conversation.

Then I realized we actually only do that before verbs, but never nouns. Like, we would say "I'm gunna eat" but we wouldn't say "I'm gunna the store." What in the actual heck? 

It's almost as bad as when another Spanish-speaker asked me to explain the difference between see, look, and watch. Just try to do it. You can't. Every time you think you've found a rule to explain when to use each one, you think of a sentence that proves your rule wrong.

—4—

After washing a load of white laundry, I was hanging some clothes on the backs of our dining room chairs to dry. My teenage son was there and I commented on how all the shades of white looked hanging next to each other. 

He just gave me a blank stare until I remembered that he's a male, and males only register like 8 distinct colors. Within any given letter of ROY G. BIV it's pretty much all the same to them, and even that's being generous because if you go ask the average man on the street the difference between "indigo" and "violet" he'll have exactly zero idea.

—5—

This week Phillip brought home a free fire blanket from work (much more useful than the whiskey glasses last week), so we thought it was a good time to do a general overview of fire safety for the kids. 

We took them on a room-by-room tour of all the fire hazards, showed them how to use the fire blanket to put out a stovetop fire, then set off the fire alarm and had everyone practice running out of the house to our agreed-upon meeting place in case of a fire.

This was actually part of a weekly devotional called Family Home Evening that members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints do. A typical Family Home Evening consists of: 

• an opening song/hymn
• a prayer
• a lesson (usually we pick a spiritual topic, but emergency preparedness is important, too)  

At the beginning of FHE this week, we told the kids the lesson topic and asked for suggestions on the opening song. This is what the 7-year-old said we should sing (I'll give you 10 seconds to guess why):

—6—

My three youngest kids were discussing the differences between basses, tenors, altos, and sopranos. I listened to their conversation and asked if they'd ever heard of a contralto.

The first I'd ever heard of or seen one was when Phillip and I went to see Handel's Messiah performed professionally. I typed 'contralto' into YouTube and this video came up:

My 12-year-old's reaction? "That was infinitely better than Fergie."

—7—

Phillip laughed one morning while checking his work emails at the breakfast table so I asked him what it was.

Apparently there was a meeting invite sent to 400 people, and someone had accidentally hit "Reply All" with the message "Nub hub bb bbbbbb."

Some people might think that was an unfortunate and embarrassing butt dial (or child playing with their phone), but I see it another way. That guy made 400 other people start their morning with a chuckle. How cool is that? 

That's why I try to see my own stupid moments as a public service. Because they usually are! It takes the pressure off everyone else to be perfect all the time, and maybe it even makes them laugh a little, too.

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