Linette and Clementine drove to Cleveland on Friday to see the Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors exhibition at the Cleveland Museum of Art, leaving Arlo and me home alone to eat banana splits while watching Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy. Before settling in the for the night, though, he and I headed out for pizza. And it was there, sitting at Bigalora, that he posed the following question, while looking up at the light fixture that hung above us. “If a rino had hands, could it lift that?,” he asked. After we spent a little time discussing what the light fixture was made of, I told him that I was pretty sure that a rino with human hands, assuming that it could stand up on its back legs and maneuver its arms in such a way to get its hands on the light, could probably lift it without too much trouble. I added, however, that I’d try to look into it a little further for him. So, if any of you happen to be scientists who study what different animals could do if they had human hands, I’d appreciate a little help.
I don’t know how much I should encourage this interest of Arlo’s in giving animals human body parts, but I’m thinking that, maybe, the next time Linette and Clementine are out, he and I should either watch Charles Laughton in The Island of Lost Souls or read The Island of Dr. Moreau. [Would that scare him away from vivisection, or draw him further in, I wonder.]
7 Comments
It seems pretty clear that Arlo knows the answer, and was just testing you.
Are we talking rhino with magic poachable horn, or RINO with flakey investigation? It’s either no, because a rhino can’t stand on its hind legs to reach, or no, because the FBI will be instructed to kick out the ladder.
The answer to such questions from children is always Yes. Arlo might enjoy Carl Sandburg’s Rutabaga Stories.
Could a RINO with hands find that Brett Kavanaugh is not innocent?
#KeepYpsilantiClean
A warning that Rootabaga Stories are intended to be American Fairy Tales, like Grimm’s, Andersen, etc. They are full of nonsense and a particular American industrial revolution/Midwest Americana vernacular, but they have a dark underbelly. I loved them as a child from 7 to 10 years or so. I re-read them in college and to my kids. Still enjoyed them. The narratives are loose and nonsensical. Some people have a hard time with that. I believe an appreciation for nonsense, non-linear narrative, and human failing prepares one well for the rest of life.
A better response may have been, “More importantly, could a giraffe with a human voice box wait tables?”
Sounds like some sort of psychology test Arlo was administering. Has he posed other such seemingly non-threatening hypothetical scenarios to you recently?