geography bee

being the pedagogic parent that i am, i insisted that if i was going to have a pokemon battle with the boys on saturday afternoon, they would have to play a quiz game with me. i tried to get them to agree to state capitals, but they talked me into just quizzing them on the 50 states. turns out, that itself was an adventure enough.

the game went like this- i'd give them a letter, and they would have to provide me with all the states that started with that letter. first letter i gave them was L. owen's quick response: "lakota?" let it be said that the kid is well read, and he did go to custer's battlefield this summer, but i didn't realize he believed in statehood for native american tribes. with only a little prompting ("think south, near texas"), one of them quickly got louisiana and calmed my fear that this might be more of a lesson in futility for me than of geography for them.

we went on, covering most of the states with fair success on their part and only a few incorrect guesses (most were cities instead of states, as well as the almost expected incorrect guess of "new england"). then came T. right out of the box, both gave texas simultaneously, then paused for a good bit. finally, brendan broke the silence with "talabama?". classic. i believe i gave them tennessee because i couldn't bear the thought of anything worse.

but there was, sort of. i think the last letter we hit on was R. silence again, until owen responded with "richigan?". obviously he was playing off brendan's previous response, but when i gave him a "come on..." look, he replied "what? that's how scooby doo would say it." now the silence was on my end. you just can't argue with logic like that.