Happiness is...

Happiness is using your freshly-turned 5 year old nephew as a studying tool.

I told him all that I knew of BSE Mad Cow Disease.
So that led to telling him about different brain lobes.

That continued from one of our other conversations about bacteria over the past year.
It tied in to a conversation about the Bubonic Plague/Black Death and it's impact on England.
The England conversation relates back to our earlier conversation about my great grandparents/his great greats, coming to Poland in the early 20th century. That led to the American Revolution. To Michigan. Snakes. Poison. Back to bacteria. E. Coli.

It came back full circle at my mom's birthday dinner.
Me: "Tommy, what's Bovine Spogiform Encephalopathy?"
Other family members: "That word is too big."
Me: "He knows it."
Tommy: "Mad Cow Disease!"
Jaws dropped around the table.

He always drives his peddle tractor towards me now saying, "Bobby it's Mad Cow Disease time!" And he knows about prions and proteins.

He was working with the ladies at the Farm and my husband, while I was in another section. I heard an account of how he pulled the roots from some stray flower plugs and said "These are the brains" and the rest of the flowers were his skull collection. Then he talked about blood infections. 

Me: "Tommy, what are you excited to learn about when you start school in the fall?"
Tommy: "Zombies, Monsters, Skeletons, Ghost-es!"


This kid. I have taught him well.