This chat was inspired by Kiley Reid’s great new book, Such a Fun Age, in which one of the main characters is a three-year old girl (she is an amazing character; she might be my favorite child in any adult book I’ve ever read). This child is very quirky, as children often are, and she is (amusingly) obsessed with smelling tea bags. This (and a conversation I had with my Dad about my childhood interest in reading the encyclopedia, which I suspect is why I love a Wiki Deep Dive so much) got me to thinking about how kids often get obsessed with one specific and sometimes unusual thing for a time. I, for example, over the course of elementary school was — in addition to sort of Normal Kid Stuff like Wonder Woman and gymnastics and the Dodgers — really into aquatic life (I still know a lot about seahorses), Hawaii (the myths! The royalty! The fruits! The kitsch! The culture!), and (this one is weird) the Yellow Page ads for in-ground swimming pools. I used to spend hours looking at that section of the Yellow Pages. I guess I wanted a pool? I don’t know. Anyway: I thought it might be fun talk about whatever weird topic we were all really REALLY into as children. Your turn!
