My cousin recently told me to grow up. She’s six years old. You know you’ve got a problem when a six-year old tells you to act more mature. I would have disagreed with her, but I’ve found that it’s impossible to argue with somebody who’s that old, because they always know how to simultaneously insult and baffle you. For example, when I told her to put her wrapper in the trash while I was baby-sitting her the other day, she quipped, “You went to Jupiter to get more stupider.” I was like, “How dare you! I did no such thing!” Another time she put her hands out about two feet apart and asked, “Are you afraid of a person this big?” I said, “Somebody that big? Why, no, I don’t—” Then she clapped her hands together and was like, “You blinked! Ha, ha, you’re afraid!” I was all, “What? But I … h-how does … what?” See, you can’t argue with something like that. It’s just too bizarre. I mean, since when is fear represented by blinking? And even if I was startled by her clapping, who’s to say that this has any relevance to being afraid of a person of a height equal to the distance that her hands were apart prior to slapping them together? Still, somehow my cousin has proved that I’m afraid of midgets, and I can’t do anything about it.

The weird thing about kids is that they all have a collective obsession with wanting to dig to China. I remember wanting to do this when I was a kid, too, but I had no idea why. It’s like, what the hell were we planning to do once we actually managed to dig to China? Overthrow the Chinese government and then proclaim the country to be a no-school zone of awesome fun? It’s not a bad plan, but I just don’t think it’s very realistic. Call me a skeptic.