‘The stork brung you’

Published 12:01 am Monday, April 18, 2011

‘Stork brung you’

Isn’t there an Elmo video for this? What should a parent say when their 5-year-old — or even younger — child asks the inevitable: Where did I come from? A new book, “Just Tell Me What to Say: Sensible Tips and Scripts for Perplexed Parents,” advises that parents should keep their answers simple, factual and brief and allow the child to advance the conversation.

We’ve always been able to handle the hows, wheres, whens, whos and whats from little kids. What leaves us a stuttering fool is “Why?”

Salt Lake, we have a problem: A Boeing engineer who works in the 777 program recently completed a 15-day stay in the Mars Desert Research Station, which simulates a martian lab in the Utah desert. Kavya Manyapu, who dreams one day of joining a mission to Mars, had to endure cramped spaces, a broken toilet, the odor of urine, bland food and a bleak and lifeless landscape.

And that was just at the Salt Lake City International Airport.

Don’t know much about history: On this day in 1934, the first laundromat, then called a washateria, opened in Fort Worth, Texas.

Coincidentally, a rift in the space-time continuum located at that laundromat is the reason why you lose one sock from every load of laundry you have ever washed.

–Jon Bauer, Herald staff