Gratuitous Domestic Posting (TM)

Please. Indulge me in this one because it's way cool.....

At dinner this evening, the topic swung round to what the Llama-ettes wanted to be when they grow up. The five year old, who usually answers "astronaut", surprised us this evening by announcing that she wishes to become a rock star, although she admitted that she would need some help from people who actually know how to play instruments. In the manner of one playing dead in the face of a pawing grizzly bear, I said nothing, only smiling in a generally encouraging although non-binding way.

But the real surprise was Llama-ette No. 1, who turns seven in a few weeks. She has been bouncing back and forth between "lawyer" and "teacher" for the past year or two, in honor of her parents. This evening she announced she wished to become a farmer. Damme if I know where that came from. Upon further inquiry, she said the reason she wanted to do so was so she could take care of baby piggies and chickens and calfs. We suggested that she might want to consider life as a veterinarian instead, but she was steadfast.

As the conversation developed, we began to explain to her all the work involved in maintaining a farm, self trying hard to refrain from blurting out that the goddam gov'mint bankrolls everything. Nonetheless, the topic shifted around to the economics of agriculture.

And here is where the magic kicked in.

You see, the gel has always had a penchant for math. She's only in first grade, but can do double-digit addition and subtraction in her head. She has the multiplication tables memorized up through her 8's, and can do both long multiplication and division on paper. (I have a strong sense that her mathematical talent has some correlation with her manifest need for order and logic.)

Anyhoo, I suddenly found myself explaining basic microeconomics to the girl via a series of word problems: We would agree that a gallon of milk would cost X dollars to produce and that she could sell it for Y dollars. We then agreed on how many gallons she would sell: For example, it might cost her two dollars to produce a gallon of milk which she would then sell for three dollars. If we assumed she sold 1000 gallons, we went on to figure out the total production cost, the total gross revenue and, subtracting the former from the latter, her profit.

That in itself was pretty cool, but here is where it got almost spooky. I wasn't paying particular attention to the numbers I was using. But as we went through four or five variations on the exercise, it turned out the girl was keeping a running total of the compound profits and would state the new sum after the completion of each excercise. What was notable about this was not the potential gain so much as the girl's natural instinct to go for the calculation, something she did completely on her own. I like to think that she already has such a solid grounding in practical mathematics that, when the time comes, she will leap right into the theoretical. Who knows - maybe she'll turn out to be the astronaut, or at least the rocket scientist.

Of course, this is just the first step into a larger universe. The last example we used had a gallon of milk going for seven dollars. I asked the Llama-ette why on earth I'd pay seven dollars for a gallon of her milk when she'd sold it in an earlier scenario for three dollars a gallon. Her ingenious reply was that it cost her five dollars to make (which is the number we used) and fair is fair. I also suggested to her that the farmer down the road might try and sell his own gallon for less than her. She replied that if they were friends, he'd never think of doing something like that. Alas, we have a long way to go.

I can't tell you how much the overall discussion impressed me. We talked about competition from the farmer down the road. We talked about all the expenses and hard work that go into producing a gallon of milk. We talked about the physical realities of having to care for a large herd of dairy cows. In the morning, the gel may have forgotten nine tenths of what I told her, but I like to think that at least something sank in.

Dang I'm proud of that girl.

Now if only we can do something about the rock star......