Helen FieldsScience Writer

This weekend I discovered my perfect German audience: three-year-old girls. I was reading a book to the daughter of a friend of a friend about some animals putting on a show. I didn’t quite get the pronunciation of the word for “stage” right, and she corrected me. With my deft foreign-language punning skills, I launched into a discussion of whether we were having stages or beans (they kind of sound alike) for dinner. It was clearly the funniest thing she had heard all day. Possibly in her whole life.

I also had a nice long chat about dinosaurs with a five-year-old boy. I didn’t catch all of it, but I did learn that they were bigger than a car. Best thing about talking to kids: they don’t get embarrassed when you mangle a sentence so badly that it’s unintelligible. They say “What?” so you know to try again.

So, as long as I don’t have to talk to or write for anyone over the age of six, I think I’m ok.