The scene: The family dinner table. Present include the the mom, Ethan (age 10), and Grant (age 8).
Ethan: Mom, would it be possible to dissect a fly?
Mom: Yes, I guess it would, but you’d need a microscope or something like that.
Grant (cheerfully piping in): And some Lilliputian tools!
Mom (laughing, with a bit of awe): “Lilliputian??”
Grant (matter-of-factly): Yes. Have you read that book?
Mom (still laughing): Why, yes I have. I’m just surprised at your literary reference.
Grant (still matter-of-factly): Well, the Lilliputians were tiny, and a fly is tiny, so you’d need tiny tools to dissect them.
To be fair, Grant’s only read the Great Illustrated Classics version of Gulliver’s Travels, and he’d just read Henry Winterfield’s Castaways in Lilliput… and he pronounced it “lill-i-POOT-ee-ins” rather than “lill-i-POOSH-’ns.” Still. I think that’s rather impressive for an eight-year-old.
