"One Big, Fat, Juicy Apple"

 

"There you go," Araceli said, setting the plate in front of her daughter, "one big, fat, juicy apple."

The apple had actually been cut into slivers better suited for Nailah's little pink petal fingers, but she didn't seem to mind. Nailah giggled and smiled, and Araceli turned to rinse an apple for herself under the kitchen faucet. When she glanced back, however, she discovered that Nailah's delight had little to do with the snack she'd been given.

"Nailah!" Araceli said. "What are you doing with Mommy's phone?"

Instead of placing the phone in Araceli's open hand, Nailah grinned and pressed a button. Suddenly Araceli's phone was transmitting a deep line of dance beats and bass notes, and Araceli's voice, heavily autotuned, was singing a club-ready ode to a big, fat, juicy juicy apple apple apple.

"Oh, lordy," said Araceli. "Honey, what did you do? How did you do that?" Juicy juicy juicy, sang the phone, and Nailah laughed. Araceli narrowed her eyes. "What exactly does it mean to you when you hear that?" she asked.

The music continued. Nailah shrugged and looked around the room, as if the answer were hiding somewhere nearby. "I don't know," she finally said, with a simple, timid smile. "That you have a juicy apple?"

Araceli took the phone from Nailah's hands. "Exactly," she said, marveling at both the depths and limits of her daughter's knowledge. "Now what do you know about uploading and selling music files?" she asked as Nailah reached for an apple slice with both hands' chubby fingers. "I think we just figured out your college tuition."

"Buzzing"

 

One afternoon, a young girl thought about sticking her fingernail into an electrical socket, just to see how it would feel. Before she did it, however, she went online to see what other people had to say on the subject, and while she understood that reading other people's testimonies was hardly the same as having an experience of her own, she did decided, based on what she read, that she now possessed enough information that she didn't need to have that particular experience quite yet.

And it was an interesting thing: in the course of reading what people had written about electricity coursing through the body, she learned a bit about both electricity and the body--how each one worked and where each one came from, and why electrical impulses were in some cases good for the operations of the body and in other cases very, very bad. Soon her head was buzzing with Ideas. With those came lots of Questions. And as far as her afternoon chores were concerned, she ended up being about as interested in completing them as she would have been had she gone ahead and stuck her fingers in the socket anyway.