Blinded me with Science

So to keep Anonybabe occupied while I made dinner Sunday night, I gave her some carrots, an empty bowl, a bowl of water and a scrub brush and asked her to help me wash the carrots for our supper. She set to with great gusto, taking one carrot at a time out of the water, giving it a earnest swipe, and then moving it to the empty bowl. When she'd moved all the carrots to the dry bowl, she would reverse the process. Back and forth, back and forth.

At one point I started taking carrots and peeling them, letting the peels fall into the dry bowl. She started experimenting with the peels. Tasting one, putting one in her hair, moving the pile of peels back and forth, in and out of the water.

When she finally got bored with this, she dug in the cabinet under the sink and found some pop-up sponges...the kind that swell when you put them in water. So I got another bowl of water for her to put the sponges in. She liked watching them grow, and then liked carrying the soaking sponges to various places in the house and squeezing them so the water would splatter onto the floor. I kept her from doing this on the carpet, but let her do it on the linoleum.

I thought, "I don't really want to tell her that isn't appropriate, you're making a mess, the floor will get slippery, oh look at your tights you're soaked we're going to have to change you for the third time today." I was really jazzed that she was experimenting and observing. I toyed with a fantasy of never encouraging her to think of the practical consequences, to always push her to go ahead, try it, see what happens. "A scientist," I thought. "Oh boy."

I tried to push the thought of the boyish, eager, gee-whiz scientists who'd developed the atom bomb out of my head. They hadn't been bogged down by pesky things like the political/social/biological consequences of their research. They'd just wanted to get to the heart of the matter, to see what made the universe tick. Their open inquisitive nature was a beauty to behold. The soul-wrenching consequences were horrifying. Not that the scientists decided to bomb Japan. They just didn't worry their smart little heads over the fact that that's what their bosses wanted to do.

As I sighed, wondering if we could ever live in a world where we didn't have to be more watchful, Anonybabe slipped in her puddle on the floor, her feet contorted as she landed on them at odd angles. She cried as I held her, then calmed as I had her wiggle her toes and feet, relieved that my momentary fantasy of a world without consequences hadn't resulted in a twisted baby ankle.