Do not instill a love of learning in your child or what happened to us yesterday may happen to you!
We were driving to a hospital two hours away to see my darling mother in law who had just had surgery. But something went desperately wrong and that two hours ended up being more like four.
That something that went desperately wrong was a tornado. As we were driving in an absolute down pour of rain, we began to notice the wind picking up and the sky turning almost black in the afternoon. We struggled to keep our vehicle in our lane as did many other cars who were on the road. And then we saw it: horizontally flying bits of debris that were unmistakable signs. We were driving on what I can only describe as the “outskirts” of a tornado.
Now if you live in tornado country, you know that there’s really nothing to do at that point except to start praying. You cannot predict which way a tornado will turn, and you can’t really out run it (well, maybe if your car is nicer than ours–but I promise you–WE can’t outrun it)! But here at this point, as we’re watching debris fly across the road in front of us my husband makes the critical error: “Look kids, I think we’re near a tornado,” he exclaims. And then, what can only be described as an overload of information ensues.
“Will we be sucked up,” asks my 7 year old. “No,” we reply calmly; but I’m thinking we may well get smacked with a branch.
“What’s the difference between a tornado and a hurricane?” asks my 5 year old. “A hurricane is over the ocean,” my husband tells him.
“If we get sucked up, can we go to the land of Oz? That was my favorite book we read this year,” declares the 7 year old.
“Dad, did you know that a hurricane has sustained winds of 140mph? Dad how fast are we going? 30mph? Is that twice as fast? Dad?”
“Dad, can a tornado touch ground in New York City?” To which my husband replies: “Kids, daddy needs to concentrate.” Now to my husband this meant that there should be silence. But my kids merely redirected the conversation.
“Mom, isn’t a tornado like a vacuum?”
My 5 year old replies, “Does cold weather make a vacuum or hot weather?”
“NOOOOOOOO! Silly! It’s when the cold weather meets the hot weather that it makes a vacuum,” my 7 year old declares. After all, she is proud that she is clearly the most knowledgable on this topic.
“Mom can we go to the library tomorrow?”
“Yeah, we need to look up how the weather works.”
“Yeah, like what’s the difference between a typhoon, a tsunami, a hurricane and a tornado.”
“Oooooohhhh! What about earthquakes? Maybe we can make a model of an earthquake?”
“Yeah. . .hey look at that! A large tree trunk flying across the road!”
“Oh cool! Is that trajectory or does it just lift of the ground?”
“I don’t know, but we can go to the library and find out.”
“Oh Alex, I know how to make a funnel that’s like a tornado in a bottle.”
“Cool. Let’s do that tomorrow too!”
“Please mom, can we,” they all chimed in together.
All of this is all together dandy if you’re not driving on the outskirts of a tornado. However, let this be a warning to over zealous homeschoolers everywhere: if you teach your children to be naturally inquisitive, they may become unaware of their dangerous surroundings. They may start to ponder great books, scientific phenomenon and other things while you are perilously trying to stay on the road and avoid other cars. They may start to pontificate the manner in which the large tree branch came to fly across the road rather than dodge it. They may even ask, or beg to go to the library during a tornado.