After a chicken dinner, the Queen B cleaned off the bird’s wishbone and invited the girls to play. This was new to the Butterfly, who asked how to play.
“Each person makes a wish,” said the Queen B, “takes a hold of one of the ends of the wishbone. Then you pull it apart, and whoever gets the bigger piece gets their wish.”
So the Ladybug and the Butterfly each grabbed an end of the bone.
“Make a wish,” reminded the Queen B, “and…. go!”
The girls pulled and pulled until the bone snapped in two, with the little Butterfly holding the biggest piece.
“Hurray,” said the Queen B, “you won! What did you wish for?”
“That I’d win! It worked!”
The Ladybug and I are driving around town, when suddenly she asks “Dad? Why do all the trucks say 16 on them?”
“What now?” I ask.
“16,” she repeats. “All the trucks say 16 on them.”
“…” I continue, lost.
“All the trucks have the same math problem on them,” she adds helpfully. “See, if I count by 4’s I get 4, 8, 12, 16. So 4 times 4 is 16.”
At that point, I figured out she was reading the “4 x 4” on the sides of trucks as the multiplication problem “4 times 4” instead of four-wheel-drive indicator “4 by 4.”
“Maybe that’s because all the boys who drive them want to be 16 again,” she added.
I thought for a moment about how to best explain the concept of a drivetrain that allows all four wheels to receive torque from a central engine when the image of the standard South Dakota truck flashed in my mind…
“You’re absolutely correct,” I agreed.
Funny stories