Pucker Up

One of the few pleasures from having kids who are smarter than you is the ability to pull their chains; rattle their bars; and just plain out-and-out lie. Ariel has a catch-all term for when I do this: she calls it "White Chocolate". This stems from years ago when I tried to explain about white chocolate (white chocolate contains the chocolate butter but not the cocoa). Turns out I was right, but whenever she gets skeptical about something of dubious veracity, she retorts: "White Chocolate".



She played the "White Chocolate" gambit last Sunday when the family journeyed to the University of Virgina at Charlottesville to attend a dance recital. Alec's girl friend, Allison, is a member of the college dance troupe and gave us tickets. We got there in plenty of time, had a late and leisurely lunch at one of the cafes on "the Corner", and Ariel and I roamed the campus to look at Mr. Jefferson's buildings. We passed the Rotunda, walked down the colonnade where the fourth-years (never call them seniors) live, and saw the serpentine wall. Along the way, we passed a young man whistling a tune. Ariel remarked "I hate whistling", to which I replied that the reason she disliked whistling was that she was completely inept at it. I also added that the UVa music department was one of the few schools in the country who offered a major in whistling. Don't you know that, in addition to his many talents and interests as a child of the Enlightenment, that Thomas Jefferson was a concert whistler as well as violinist and in great demand as a performer? "No way" replied my daughter, "White Chocolate". We carried on thus until we came across Alec and Pat on benches in a leafy alcove, presided over by a statue of Mr. Jefferson himself. Alec chimed in that, in addition to writing several pieces for the glass harmonica (an instrument long since out of fashion), Mozart himself composed four concertos for whistlers. Ariel was somewhat nonplussed at that; either it was true, or Alec was riffing on the original bald-faced lie that Dad had started. I think my downfall was in pointing out that, if you examined the Jefferson statue closely, you could see his lips were pursed. They aren't. Had her going for a bit, though.

The recital, by the way, was delightful.