My Family Is Just Like Yours.....Well, Maybe Not

Many folk who are meeting GFT for the first time ask me questions designed to illicit info about my family, hobbies, activities, daily lifestyle patterns. Rest assured, I am boringly middle class in most respects : I live in a "Leave It to Beaver" style suburban, two story home, on a quiet shady suburban street . I have one husband ( and one ex) , plus two sons, who are more than a little similar to Wally and the Beav. Numerous dogs, cats, and other critters. Most of my days are filled with a routine similar to your own : rouse the kids, nag them till they get dressed and off to school, work all day, come home, drive them around to their various lessons, return home, cook dinner, watch tv, go to bed, get up and do it all over again. My hobbies are of the mom sort and include friends, book clubs, reading, visiting family. Nothing really exciting , no deep dark secrets : not running a meth lab, not secretly a hooker, not running a ponzi scheme, not a member of a swinging couples swap club. I drink very little, and my wild and crazy days happened decades ago. Just like that family in the holiday movie "A Christmas Story", my husband does swear like a sailor, occasionally brings home some ugly object he thinks will complement our home decor, and we do have random domestic disasters - such as a pack of wandering dogs eating the holiday turkey - unfortunately for us, they belong to us, not any hillbilly neighbors.

*

There is one aspect in which my family is probably different from yours, however. Because the hubster is a scientist, a professor at a local university, he can't help but talk about work at home. Not only that, but due to his ever-inquiring mind, he finds strange and wonderful topics of conversation in nearly everything he encounters . What causes the mold in cheese to make it so tasty ? Who invented the periodic table, and why ? What is a buckeyball ? How is a football play like a physics problem ? What is the atomic number for Darmstadium ? What causes the tides at the beach ? How does electric current make the light bulbs work ? Why does the full moon seem large some times, and smaller, at other times ? You see what I mean - the discussion never ends. As a result of all this, like the preacher's son, both our children are so blase about science, neither plans at this moment to make a career in it. Yet both of them can tell you all about nanotechnology - probably more than you want to know. We discuss all these topics and more, every night at the dinner table. Bon appetit !