The holiday of Purim just passed and one of the traditions is the giving of mishloach manot, which are baskets of food, traditionally hamantaschen cookies and other yummy things. I’d like to tell you I’m not sitting here working my way through the cookies and candy, but you wouldn’t believe me anyway, so what’s the point.
Last night we had a “Wine and Smell” party at the house. Pie and a buddy (I’m going to call her Monet) are doing a project for the school science fair. They recruited six friends and gave each of them a T-shirt. The kids (including Monet and Pie) slept in the T-shirt for five days and then they all came to our house so that each mom could sniff the shirts and see if she could tell which one belonged to her daughter. So they all came over last night. Juice boxes for the kids. Wine for the moms. Hamantschen for everyone.
And the little scientists went to work. Sort of. Three moms sniffed shirts. And then I heard Pie say to Monet, “Let’s go par-tay with the other kids downstairs!” as they clomped down to the playroom.
“Um, excuse me?” I yelled. “Don’t you need to finish your experiment?”
Deep sigh. “Oh, okay.”
Back to work. “We’re interviewing people after they smell,” Monet said. Sounds good. I heard Pie interview one mom: “So are you confident in your choice?” When my turn came, Monet asked, “Do you think that you were involved influenced your ability to pick the right shirt?” Why, no, I said. And I waited for the next question. “No, that’s it,” Monet said. To both of them, I asked, “But aren’t you going to ask everyone the same questions? How are you going to get statistically significant results if we all have different questions?” To which they looked at me and said, “Huh?”
It was all very scientific. And while I don’t want to give away any results before the science fair, I will say that, no, I could not pick out my own child. But that’s only because we were smelling shirts. Had it been socks, I could have picked Pie out at 10 paces. Stinnnnkkkky!
At least it wasn’t a “Whine and Smell” party…
She saved the whining for after the party…