Life in the Button Factory

I've mentioned before that we are doing an overview of the fifty states in our homeschool. We recently covered Ohio, and the teacher's manual had a little script to introduce a famous Ohioan, Neil Armstrong.

"In 1969," the text read, "Neil Armstrong did something very important. How old was your grandmother in 1969?" Just for fun, I pointed out that Scott was 6 years old--Katie's age--in 1969. We then figured up that Nana and Terry were 23 and 22 in 1969. I made sure to point out that I was born the next year--1970--making me quite the youngster of the group by comparison.

We returned to the teacher's manual and read, "Do you know what Neil Armstrong did in 1969 that was so important?" Will, after thinking through some possibilities, guessed, "Fought in the Civil War?"

Fought in the Civil War?? Dude! You think I was born during the Civil War?? I laughed until I was crying. This is just the latest in innocent remarks on my ancientness. When Will was 3, he asked if I saw live dinosaurs when I was little. Um, yeah, we had a pet stegosaurus.

Last month, he asked, "How can you have that much silver in you hair and I'm not even in my teen years yet?" If I'm not completely grey silver by the time he's ready to learn to drive, I am quite sure I will be shortly thereafter.