this is not a journal title

Today I went out to the armory museum with one of my work friends (though she's got a new job, so technically she's not a work friend anymore). She's got two kids, one a boy aged 5, and the other a 2-year-old girl. The little girl at once point was playing with chess pieces while my friend was talking with the boy. The girl picked up a piece, and I told her it was a rook. She said "ruk," softly but definitely. I picked up the other black rook and asked her what it was called. Again, "ruk." She learned it right there on the spot. For more of a challenge, I asked her if she could find another rook - this was a double challenge in my opinion, because she already had both black rooks in her hand - but she successfully picked up a white rook. I was quite impressed. If my friend lived near me, I'd want to babysit. Never mind that I've never changed a diaper, I'm gonna hafta learn sometime. :-P

The boy's awesome too, he knows the difference between halberds and pikes, and (more importantly) between Mars and Saturn. Back in April my friend brought them to a little observing session I was running on campus, and today he remembered that we'd seen Mars' ice caps then - heck, I didn't remember!