logic

My six year old’s powers of logic amaze me. Seriously, he is so intelligent and quick to catch on to things that it is sometimes scary. He does it all the time but usually my mouth is hanging open and I am so awestruck that I forget to take a mental note of exactly what it was he said that was so impressive to me.

Tonight as we read If You Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Joffe Numeroff, he was perplexed by this part:

If you give a mouse a cookie

he’s going to ask for a glass of milk.

When you give him the milk,

he’ll probably ask you for a straw.

When he’s finished, he’ll ask for a napkin.

Then he’ll want to look in a mirror

to make sure he doesn’t

have a milk mustache.

The child waited until I had finished reading the book before he frowned slightly and remarked, “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“What doesn’t make any sense, little one?”

“If he drank his milk through a straw,” he mused, “Why on earth would he think he might have a milk mustache?”

I opened my mouth to speak, closed it, opened it again and said, “Why indeed?”

He frowned once more, shrugged his shoulders as if to say, People can be so silly! and kissed me goodnight.

I’ve read that book to my older son a million times. Why did I never think to question how a mouse would get a milk mustache when he drank milk from a straw?

Why indeed.