Season’s greetings! 🙂
Life consists of stories. Science is part of life. Don’t deny that. Enjoy it. 🙂
TRANSCRIPT:
Living close to Norway’s longest and finest beach did have its perks. For one, I was able stand in the water, hands in the pockets of my khaki shorts, pondering life, the universe and everything, having the water freeze away my toes at the same time as catching a sunstroke on my forehead.
Wonderful times.
To me, that is. My daughter saw me doing it every time we went there, always
wanting to join in, but never quite managing to get into the cold water.
“Come on.” I said. “Just hop in.”
“Hop in? You ain’t been hopping into anything, dad. You just stand there with the water up to the ankles.”
“That’s right.”
I continued standing there in the midnight sun, contemplating the fact that I had just passed the magic number explaining everything. I was 43 years of age at that point. While I thought thoughts of thinking, I did not notice that she had gotten into the water and come over. I started, and she grinned.
“That blue colour, though.” she said. I waited for her to finish the sentence. She did not finish it, but laughed.
“Daddy, my legs!”
“Hey, who folded your legs?!??”
“What do you mean?!”
“If you fold them a little more, you can make a paper plane out of them.”
“Pfft.” she said and jumped around in the shallow water, stopping only to feel the sand between her toes.
“Mine are folded like that, too.” I said and pointed downwards. “Like a piece of paper.”
She pfft-ed once more and continued hopping around like a hare on rabies. Then she stumbled and fell face first into an oncoming wave. Twenty seconds later, she sat in the sand on the beach, shivering. I waded out of the water and up towards her. For some reason, she had not put the towel around herself. I tried to help her.
“No.” she complained, taking the towel and putting it around her shoulders herself. Then she did something only kids can do. She went from the deepest form of disgust to beautiful bliss.
“Did you know,“ she said, „that water doesn’t have any colour when you’re inside it?!”
Her eyes positively beamed at me. It took me a moment to realize what she had said.
“It isn’t blue at all, you know. Why do they draw the sea blue? Like, always. But it isn’t
blue at all!”
Hm. I thought. That was a good point.
“I wouldn’t drink blue water anyway!” she said.
„True.“ I answered and joined her in gazing out over the ocean.
