%title The story of my childhood 9.9
%date 2006-03-18 19:35:51
:diary:livejournal:fossils:

<details text="Cut for lameness :D"><summary>Cut for lameness :D</summary>My brothers towered above me, exchanging glances and smiles I could not interpret.  My mother and father lived on an Olympus of subtleties and nuance.  I watched them and wondered.  I wondered about a lot of things.

"If you were a tiny man, as big as my thumb," I said to my father, "and you stood inside my mouth, and I closed my mouth, would you suffocate and die?"

My father stared at me.

"Jane," he said, "I'm speechless."

"'I'm speechless' is speech," I said, somewhat mollified by this linguistic triumph.

I resented the state of childhood wonder.  It was insatiable, yet it seemed to me to be no more than a puerile affliction, like baby teeth.  My ignorance struck me as a bizarre anomaly, for I felt, with utter certainty, that I was - how can I say this? - that I was <em>sufficient</em>.  Evidence to the contrary forced itself on me every hour of every day, but that seemed to me some preposterous misunderstanding.

<em>- <u>The Evolution of Jane</u> by Cathleen Schine</em>

EDIT:  Not quite sure what a 'fother' is, so I figured 'father' was close enough :oP

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