Go Ask Your Father: Images, Uvulas, PostMortem, and Amusement Parks

We made it to Friday, y’all. Some of you are finished school for the summer. Others are nearly finished. We still have the rest of the month. The kids are pretty much on autopilot now. They’re just cruising through to the end the year.

1. Why am I upside down in the spoon?

Perhaps it’s not you that is upside down. Perhaps it is the spoon. Or better yet, perhaps there is no you or spoon and this is just some computer simulated universe. The real reason is because the spoon is concave- or indented (like a cave). The back of the spoon is convex, and therefore you look mostly normal, whatever your normal is. However, on the concave side, light is not reflected at straight angles as if you were looking at yourself in the knife. Instead, because of its concaveness, light at the bottom of the spoon is reflected upward while light at the top is reflected downward. This effectively flips your image.

2. What’s that dangly thing in my throat?

This is the kind of question you get when your child is inspecting their sore throat in a mirror and notices a little punching bag (speed bag) shaped piece of skin way in the back. Called a uvula [you-view-lah] (not to be confused with a vulva, that’s something completely different). Once upon a time it was believed to help guide food and water as humans were the only mammals to not bend over to eat and drink. Then it was thought to induce the gag reflex. It was also believed to cause chronic coughing which could easily be cured with a simple clipping. These people would undergo uvulopalatopharyngoplasty to have it removed. It was also suspected of causing cardiovascular problems like SIDS. Today, scientists think that it helps with speech as humans are the only animals who have a uvula.

3. What happens to bodies after they die?

I’m not sure if he was looking for a scientific answer or not. I’m hoping not, because I’m not NCIS or a mortician. So instead I opted with what people would like to have done with their bodies after their time here on Earth comes to an end. Some opt to be cremated. This turns their body to ash to be stored in urns and pendants or taken to a location of significance and scattered. Neil DeGrasse Tyson doesn’t want this as the heat from his body is released into space and is of no assistance to Earth. Whereas if he were buried he could “feed” the Earth as the Earth fed him through his life. So some choose to be buried. Some chose to donate their bodies to science. There are now new and creative ways to be memorialized. For example, you can be turned into a tree. Or more specifically, you are cremated then your ashes are used to grow a tree and you are buried so your tree can flourish. You have your cremains pressed into a vinyl record, or put into fireworks, or even into tattoo ink.

4. Can we go to an Amusement park?

Bang has very few fears when it comes to amusement park rides. A fair (think traveling carnival) comes to town at the beginning of every summer and Bang loves to ride the rides. Just last summer he was finally tall enough to ride some of the adult rides. There were a couple he still wasn’t tall enough for and he made his disappointment plainly obvious. This is not how I was at his age. I hated roller coasters. At one park, my parents would tell me every ride that I did get on went upside down. Including the log flume. Fortunately, I wasn’t quite gullible enough to believe them. Now he wants to go to a “real” amusement park to ride “real” roller coasters. Including the ones that go upside down.

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