Lucy’s full of knowledge
She eats like a bird . . . a little bird.
For some reason, unless it’s pancakes or breakfast potatoes, Lucy picks at her food. During the picking, however, the most unusual and delightful things come wafting across the dinner table, things that seem to have been locked inside her brain for hours or days. They are arbitrary, unusual, and almost always entertaining. It’s a little like watching Chris Rock polish a monologue.
“Poppa, do you know where the dollar sign came from?” she asks. “Nope, honey, I don’t.” “Well, she says, we learned in first grade that it used to be U.S. and they dropped the bottom of the U and just put two lines through the S. Then they decided to abbreviate it more and just put one line through it, $.” Her dad just looks at me, shakes his head, and says, “Did you learn that in first grade?” I joked that because we were so poor, we didn’t have dollars when I was in first grade.
“Poppa, there’s a Greek superman,” she blurts out. “Really, I ask, a Greek superman?” “Yes, Poppa,” she says. Then she goes on to tell me that this particular Greek superman wasn’t provided with any superpowers. In fact, he’s stuck in the box that you buy him in at the store. (Sounds like an economic challenge to me.)
Then she goes into an entire routine about Cazz Michael Michaels, the Will Ferrell character from the “Blades of Glory” movie appears as a washed-up skater inside a large strange man-suit in a production of Grublets on Ice. Lucy starts mumbling, “I just threw up in here, people. That’s the reality. Another layer to the legend. I am nothing but a human onion. In fact, we all are. Oh, encore,” and she ends with a throwing up sound.
“Pluto was named by an 11-year-old girl,” she says. “Hmmmm, I reply, so you have two more years to go.” “Yeah, she says, I want to name Planet 9. Planet 9 is kind of a boring name.”
She takes one tiny bite of chicken breast and says, “Speaking of birds, do you know that there are now more plastic pink flamingos in the United States than real flamingos?” “I wonder whose counting them,” I reply?
“Poppa, you were alive in the 1960s right?” she asks. “Yes, honey, I was a teenager in the ’60’s why,” I ask? “Well, I read the other day that they actually made celery flavored green jello in the 1960s. Do you remember eating any of that?” That one took me back as I dug deep into my culinary memory bank. Then it hit me that I did remember eating green jello that tasted like celery, but, for some reason, people in my little town made jello salad either with canned fruit cocktail inside or with, (Are you ready?) celery inside. I wonder if it was the celery or the jello flavored celery that I was tasting.
“Do you know why Yaya has a wall in her house that’s painted red?” she asks. “Hmmmm, because it’s a pretty accent wall?” I reply. “Nope, Poppa, she has a red wall facing the kitchen because the color red makes you hungry, and she thinks it will make me eat more.” Lucy replies. (I don’t really believe that’s why the wall’s red, but I’m OK with that.)
Finally, she looks at me and says, “Cat pee can glow under a black light.” “Okay, you got me,” I say. “That’s one that I never would have known or guessed in my entire life. I know that other things glow under a black light, but I never knew that about cats.” Lucy smiles, takes another tiny little bite of chicken breast, smiles smugly and says, “Hang around me, Poppa, I’ve got a lot more where that came from.”
Nick Jacobs of Pittsburgh is the international director for SunStone Management Resources and author of the blog healinghospitals.com.