1 Mother 2 Another

So as Maddie and I were walking home from
school yesterday, we chatted about the different things she’d
done during the school day. The subject of recess came up –
one of the favorite times of the day, naturally – and I asked
after Maddie’s long-term project, digging to China.


“Oh,” Maddie sighed, “we aren’t doing that
any more. We had to stop.”


“Why is that?” I asked, assuming the story would have
something to do with a gentle-but-firm teacher and a lack of a
desire on said teacher’s part to have a large,
liability-laden hole in the school yard.

“Well, apparently Elise’s mom
said it’s going to be physically impossible to dig to
China,” she said glumly.


“Mmm,” I nodded sagely, thinking the kids had finally
realized that you could not actually get to another country by
digging a hole in the ground.


“Yeah,” Maddie continued, “Elise’s mom said
there’s no way to dig straight through to the other side of
the earth without going through the magma core. So me and Elise got
to talking, and we were worried that releasing the pressure on the
liquid core might start some shifting of the tectonic plates, and
one of the good things about living in the middle of Texas is that
we’re in the midst of one of the earth’s plates and
therefore relatively safe from the threat of an earthquake. We just
didn’t want to risk stirring up the center of the earth and
possibly having to deal with an earthquake here – I
can’t have that worry going on right now. So we suspended our
digging.”


Not really sure what to say to that, except thanks, Elise’s
mom, for saving us from that potential earthquake.