Fallacious Thinking (Subtitle: Where Snow Comes From)

She could tell you a thing or two

I've noticed that a three-year-old's thinking is at once perfect and fallacious. One one hand, I love how her brain knows no prejudice. She loves people and does not yet divide them into categories. Everyone is her friend. She's bright and she's absorbing her world at lightning speed. It's very cool to watch.

On the other hand, some of her thinking is, well, wrong. But how to convince her of that? You don't. Trust me, I've tried.

Snow comes from streetlights. What, you didn't know? It''s been snowing a lot lately. At night it is, of course, easier to see the snow when you look up at the streetlamps. And since you can really only see the snow under the streetlamps, obviously they are generating the snow. Makes perfect sense.

Only girls have ponytails. She's pretty firm on this one. "I'm a girl because I wear a ponytail," she tells me.

"Okay," I respond, "But what about Brian at church? He has long hair and wears it in a ponytail."

She looks at me blankly. Does not compute. I even pointed (somewhat discreetly) at Brian last Sunday. "Look, he has a ponytail and he's obviously not a girl."

"Only girls have ponytails," she said matter-of-factly.

Boys drink green soda and girls drink brown soda. She is not totally off-base on this one. I have been working in the software development industry for 12 years and the guys are more inclined to be Mountain Dew addicts. I drink Diet Wild Cherry Pepsi, which is brown, and therefore I am a girl.

Her eyes are changing colors. My daughter's eyes are blue, but sometimes they do appear more of a grayish blue. Or even a greenish gray. My eyes are hazel - they are primarily green with a bit of brown around the pupil. Lately she keeps looking in the mirror and saying, "Mama, my eyes are turning green like yours!"

This one actually tugs at my heart a bit. Our eye colors are not at all similar. On the surface I know this is just a reflection of a little girl who wants to be like her mama (that'll wear off once she realizes what a goober I am). On a deeper level, though, I find myself wondering if she is starting to internalize the adoption discussion we had a few months ago. She doesn't bring it up too often, though periodically she will say, "I was a baby in J's tummy."

It is fun watching a child's brain develop and grow. I assume she won't go off to college thinking that snow comes from streetlights, so I don't argue with her too much.

I remember having some goofy thoughts myself when I was growing up. When I heard "this program brought to you by . . . " on television, I thought that broughtoyouby was a word. One year, on New Year's Eve, I was standing on our balcony with my father. This was before my parents got divorced, so I must've been six or so. Right at midnight, my father threw a cigarette on the ground and at the same time, we heard fireworks. For quite a while, I believed that something magical happened to the ground at the stroke of midnight and that if you threw a cigarette at it, fireworks would ensue.

A lot of my fallacious thinking was created and encouraged by my parents, though (this is what happens when teenagers reproduce and then use their small child as entertainment). My father has a mole in the middle of his back. He told me that after I went to bed, he would press the mole and that wings would come out of his shoulder blades. And then he would fly to 7-11. I won't even tell you how long I bought that one. I also believed in Big Foot. My parents told me that Big Foot would take my bike if I left it outside overnight. They also convinced me that if I ate some birdseed, I would be able to whistle just like our parakeet, Curtis.

Is it too late to call Child Protective Services?