11 Comments on “Another Note From Athena”

1. Hi Athena!

   Tell your father he should stop sending children to do his dirty work. We would have understood. And we would not have thrown the rotten fruit we keep handy for just such an occasion. Really, we wouldn’t have.

   Anyway, keep him busy while you have him.

   Cheerio!

2. It’s a cunning plan, keeping the hounds at bay by sending your cute kid to make your excuses. I’m half-tempted to shout “HA! I SEE THROUGH YOUR PLAN!”, and swoop down from the rafters, spreading destruction as I fly/fall. But then you’d stop with the cute kid posts… yes, it’s a cunning plan. It works :-)

3. Athena, honey, you’re just beautiful. Did you know that?

   You take good care of your Daddy this weekend, OK? Enjoy him while you’ve got him all to yourself!

4. What is all this humane society stuff? The blogman is a human being. The daughter is not his registered owner, only pictured, here, for agentorial effects. As such, he should be treated as a human being. With cruel and unjust punishment.

5. One day I passed by, on bicycle, this pre-school. Stopped to say hello, to this girl who worked at the pre-school. I had a bell on my bicycle. I rang the bell. The bell made a sound that sounded like an ice cream truck. 50 kids looked my way. So I did the only thing I could, I shouted, “ice cream, candi, soda”..the whole script..50 kids came running at me on my bicycle, refusing to unbelieve that I was not an ice cream truck. It was a clear day. Nothing fogged the kids vision but they simply refused to believe that what was in front of their very eyes was not the ice cream truck that the sound of my bell had signaled. Their great expectations soon developed into a stampede. Fear not for me, though, for there was a 12-foot high chain-link fence between me and my greatness. Meanwhile, I became quite speechless at this reception. The teacher nicely came to my rescue and said, “See what you started.” 50 Athenas’ pulling a riot on me, that day.

6. Dear Athena,

   If you can learn to produce that look at will, you will have boys performing your every wish in about a dozen years. All you need to do is learn to flutter your eyelashes a little, maybe toss your hair some, and they’ll be fighting each other to carry your books. They won’t have to know that you’re an extremely capable young woman who can out think any of them (probably all of them combined) in a flash. And they probably won’t care, either. Guys are just like that. Just don’t giggle too much — it makes us all look bad.

   You might even get away with that with your daddy now and then, but I wouldn’t try it too much on your mom. She’s in on the secret.

7. Great, Sue. Just what every dad of a young girl wants to hear, stories of boys flocking after their daughter when they get to be a teenager. Like we don’t have nightmares about that already.

8. So what I’m seeing is that Scalzi’s Whatever is turning into a blog version of Family Circus, with children available to fill in for Dad whenever he’s feeling slack.

   All that’s needed now is a cute drawing of how, when Krissy calls Athena for dinner, Athena first romps through the universe, a dotted line leading from outside Camp Scalzi to Barnard’s Star, then to Wolf 359, then Epsilon Eridani, then back home by way of Struve 2398 (either A or B, her pick).

9. Stephen, as long as relativistic effects are retained and displays dad at >= 100 years old on Athena’s return, I’m for it. Otherwise, it’s just another fantasy cum blog post cum Bil Keane comic strip.

10. She is too cute. Truly. I think there ought to be a law.

11. Ron,
    I hear ya on that ice-cream thing. Anyone who says it is as easy as ‘taking candy from a baby’ never tried to take candy from a baby.