The Mouths of Babes

In church today, Beck was playing with a tube of little plastic marine animals. He likes to dump them all out on the pew, then put them back in, one at a time, naming each one. Sea staw. Shawk. Sting way. Dafin. Hammahead. Occasionally he gets to one that he can't remember. On this occasion, he looked trustingly up at Big Daddy, waiting for a hint. "Humpback whale," Big Daddy told him as Beck dropped a sperm whale into the tube. "That's not a Humpback," I whispered over Beck's head. Big Daddy shrugged his shoulders and rolled his eyes as if to say, "Drop it, Cousteau." Tootle. Shamu whale. Eel. He stopped again and looked up at Big Daddy with an actual humpback whale in his hand. "Humpback whale," Big Daddy told him. Beck paused for a moment with a mix of confusion and determination on his face. He fished the other whale out of the tube and held it up next to the new whale. "That not humpback. THIS humpback," he said. Well put, Beck. As Big Daddy's eyes met mine over Beck's head, I looked back at him with a look that said, "Just call me Jacques."