the_wisdom_of_children epitome of incomprehensibility A few weeks ago, I was going through a math sheet on symmetry with one of the kids I tutor, a boy in fourth grade. He drew the correct lines of symmetry through every shape, so after he was finished I asked a sort of trick question: "How many lines of symmetry does a circle have?" I was expecting either a wrong answer or the conventional one, that a circle has infinite lines of symmetry (though these are hypothetical lines; you can't draw infinite lines, can you?) but instead he paused, then answered, "It's ALL symmetry." 130607 ... raze at my first job out of high school, one of my coworkers was a guy named greg. he had curly greying dark brown hair and an impressive mustache. he looked like the handsome, gracefully-aging former star of an amusingly cheesy 1980s television show. a canadian cousin to "magnum, p.i.", maybe. one of his hands was a silver metal hook. i never found out how he lost the hand, or why there was a hook instead of a more realistic prosthetic placeholder. he didn't volunteer the information, and i didn't ask. we became friends. not the "spend time together after-hours" kind of friends, but the "enjoy hanging out together at work" kind. i was eighteen at the time. he looked to be in his mid-forties. we just clicked. we got whoppers from burger king a few times, and i was struck by how adept he was at driving and handling the food with only one hand. we didn't talk about a lot of personal things. but one day, in the middle of winter, greg opened up and told me a little about his son. he was a single dad. his son was six or seven at the time, i think. he told me how difficult it had been to explain to the boy that he wouldn't be able to get him much for christmas. we were telemarketers (satan's spawn, every last one of us), barely making minimum wage, and greg was just getting by. he didn't want to disappoint his son. but he felt a need to be upfront with him about their situation. at least this way, the kid wouldn't wake up christmas morning with his heart sinking into his stomach as he realized there was nothing much in his stocking. after greg had outlined their situation and apologized, the boy looked at him, clear-eyed, and said, "that's okay, dad. none of that's really important anyway. what matters is that we're together." i've never forgotten that. 130607 what's it to you? who go blather from