The Important Child Thing

 On Saturday, I dropped my pontoon boat into the water and sliced around the lake with a few people from the place next to me. Randy and Melissa brought along their four-year-old daughter, Emelia. As is my custom, I asked little "Em" if she would like to "drive" the boat. She loved the idea and took the wheel alongside her father in the captain's chair.

It's funny. All children have the same question as soon as they get underway behind the wheel. They don't ask what direction they should go or how fast they should proceed, as an adult might. Instead, Em asked the important child thing all children ask: "How do I honk the horn?"

—Mitchell Hegman

Something Isaac Asimov Said

—    “People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.”

—    “The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.”

—    “It is not only the living who are killed in war.

The Sad-Face Daikon Radish

Perhaps you recall (there have been many) one of the stories of someone finding the image of Jesus burned into their toast. There was also the case in 2004 when a potato chip bearing what was claimed to be the likeness of Elvis Presley was discovered by a woman in Virginia. The chip was later sold on eBay for $1,000. Only a year later, a Cheeto snack resembling the famous physicist Albert Einstein's profile was found in a bag of Cheetos.

While I can’t contribute another story of finding the likeness of a famous historical figure in my food, I would like to share something first cousin to that. I have posted a photograph of the “Sad-Face Daikon Radish.” I pulled the dejected vegetable from a row of radishes Desiree has been nurturing in her modest garden.

The Sad-Face Daikon Radish

—Mitchell Hegman

Choice

For her twelfth birthday

she asked for either a baton or a piano.

 

A fool’s choice.

 

And now she parades along the street,

her left hand thrust high,

imagining she is somehow twirling a pure white grand piano above her. 

She alone can hear the ghostly chords reaching out

to stir finches from the nearby ash trees.

—Mitchell Hegman

Montana (More Interesting Facts)

• Montana is the only state that is exactly one time zone wide. The state’s eastern border marks the line of Central Time and the western boundary marks Pacific Time. Montana is entirely within the Mountain Time Zone.
• Four of Montana’s 56 counties have fewer than 1,000 residents.
• The shoreline of Fort Peck Reservoir is equal in length to the California coastline. They are both about 1,500 miles long.
• Montana has more cars registered per capita than any other state, with 184 vehicles for every 100 people.
• Just over 34 percent of vehicles on the road in Montana are pickup trucks. The only state with more pickup trucks per capita is Wyoming, where it’s 38 percent.
• Jordan, Montana is one of the remotest county seats in the United States. The nearest airport is 175 miles away while the nearest bus line is 85 miles away.
• Montana has the largest variety of mammals in the United States. Some of these animals are elk, bison (the largest land mammal in North America), grizzly bears and buffaloes.
• Fort Benton is as far inland as a person can navigate by boat on any continent. Located 3,560 miles from the Gulf of Mexico, it’s known as the “world’s innermost port.”

—Mitchell Hegman

Source: https://thefactfile.org/montana-facts

Buddy

Among what may be considered my more fruitless habits is my attempt at saving the lives of insects that are somehow trapped in my human contrivances. Early in the mornings, when dew collects on my hot tub cover, I often find both moths and water boatmen literally stuck in the watery layer where they have landed. I do my best to dab up the hapless critters and flick them off along their way again. And while both you and I might have an argument against grasshoppers, I regularly collect those and beetles from the floor of my garage and pitch them back into the sunny grass.

Yesterday, I scooped up a small hopper and trotted it outside while enclosed (and squirming) in my hand. Weirdly enough, the grasshopper refused to jump off my hand when I opened it outside. “You’re free to go eat a hole in the leaf of one of Desiree’s flowers,” I told the hopper.

The hopper took a few steps but remained on my hand. I next lowered my hand beside the brick ledge to encourage the critter to hop off. No luck with that. Apparently, the grasshopper thought I was his buddy. I was actually able to retrieve my smartphone for a "buddy picture" before forcefully tossing the hopper into the wild.

My Buddy

—Mitchell Hegman

Failure Up Close

Some mornings, my first action for the day is applying eye drops to my own eyes to combat dry, itchy eyes. Question: How is it that I can miss hitting my eye with a drop two or three times in a row while holding the dropper no more than an inch away?

—Mitchell Hegman