Stream of Consciousness

When I was younger, my sister and I used to play a game I liked to call the association game. We would start with a random object and then time ourselves about a minute while we allowed our thoughts to wander. After time was up we would tell each other where we ended up and how we got there. As an example, we might start with a penguin, and while I ended up at a car, she would be thinking of Des Moines, Iowa. I always thought it was a good mental exercise, but now I see that I was an incredibly bored child.
I have recently discovered a very similar phenomenon with my 5 year old daughter. Today I taught her about krill. To those without young children, it might seem a random subject, but allow me to follow the path of our conversation.
“Daddy, I’m cold. I’m going to turn into an ice cube!”
“No you’re not. If you did maybe I should use you to cool down my drink”
“I wouldn’t fit into a cup though!”
“There are cups that are big enough.”
“No there aren’t!”
At this point, we proceed to the internet, where I find this photo:



“Wow! But there’s not a straw big enough for that cup.” (The internet fails me here, as I am unable to locate a picture of a giant straw.)
“How do they make things that big?”
Here is where I delve into a brief introduction to the Guiness Book of World Records, and a 10 minute journey on the computer where we find the world’s biggest pizza, chair, sandwich, truck, tires, and hamburger. On a side note, my daughter now thinks giants might very well be real. We eventually get to this point:
“Find the world’s biggest banana.”
“Well, bananas are grown, Ryley, so it’s not going to be gigantic. The really big things are things people make.”
“What about the biggest animal?”
So now we’re looking at pictures of the blue whale, and a comparison drawing that shows that it is more than twice the length of a city bus.
“Do those whales eat people?”
That’s how we got to krill, the ½ inch shrimp-like creatures that blue whales eat. And that is a snapshot of life as a daddy to an inquisitive 5 year old girl.