I'm no stranger to hyperbole. It can be great for making a point. For example:
George W. Bush is the stupidest anti-christ-iest President in history!
See, on the surface that seems obviously true, and even digging several levels deeper, it's impossible to disprove, but scholars from the future will eventually determine that as far as antichristiness goes, it's a tie between Dubya and Grover Cleveland. Non-consecutive terms? Devilry!
Usually I'm the guy debunking the hyperbole. I'm the snopes of exaggeration, applying the magnifying glass of qualitative analysis to human excitement. For example, I went running with my running group on Saturday. Partway through the run, one woman asked if I had seen Pam recently. I said that I hadn't seen Pam in months. Five seconds later, Pam biked past us.
The woman flipped out.
"No WAY!" she screeched. "I can't believe Pam just rode by! That was the weirdest thing EVER!"
"Ever? Weirdest thing ever? Nah. Weird, but not THAT weird." I panted.
"COME ON! THAT WAS THE WEIRDEST THING EVER!" she insisted.
"Are you kidding me? You saw someone from our athletic club, at a time when we exercise, in a place where we exercise. On a scale from 1, where 1 is 'I had cereal for breakfast', to 10, where 10 is 'Aliens just landed on earth!', where does this really fall?" I asked.
"Oh, nevermind."
That's why I don't have many friends. Anyway, Daisy saw the Nancy Drew movie a few months ago.
"How was it?" I asked.
"Great!" she enthused.
"Oh yeah? How great? On a scale from 1 to 10?"
"10!"
Whoa! A 10! Daisy really liked that movie, I thought. A month later she saw the animated movie, "Meet the Robinsons"
"How was Meet the Robinsons?" I asked
"Pretty good."
"How good is pretty good? On a scale from 1 to 10?"
"9."
Nine! Dang. She really liked that movie, I thought again. I continued this data gathering over the months, polling Daisy for numerical ratings each time she saw a movie. Without fail, each movie registered a 9 or 10. Only the movie "Sky High" deviated from this range, coming in at a SpinalTapian 11. It would appear that the Daisy Scale for movie ratings starts at 9 and goes to 11.
What have I learned from all this? Two things:
1) Humans can't be trusted.
2) It's going to take a long time to squeeze all the enthusiasm out of my eight year-old daughter's body.
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6 comments:
aeons and a couple of days.
Actually, you probably have between 6-8 years before she's a disaffected teenager who thinks everything sucks. Have a great day!
OH MY GOD!!!!!! This is the BEST post you've EVER written!!!! WOW!!!
:)
p.s. Beep.
Nice vowel-dumping spelling of "eon" there, NRD2.
Tiny, that's true, and I'll be having the opposite argument with her, trying to qualitatively prove that our house rules don't "suck the biggest balls ever".
4th sister, I'm not a religious man, but I'll join you in an amen there. Amen.
JR, that was the lamest beep ever.
Back in college I knew someone who graded movies on a binary scale of 0 to 1.
If you think about it, that's kind of what Roger Ebert does with his thumb. At work, I mean.
Neel, I like that 0/1 system, but I will quickly dismiss the image of Ebert and his non-work thumbs.
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