Me: “It’s a hospital.”

C, quite calmly: “In case somebody dies.”

D: “Or gets a boo-boo.”

*

We drove down to Boston, and as we were leaving the city, we drove under a couple of underpasses – roads that go under the city. The boys asked if we were under the water (we’re used to tunnels around our home turf, and these looked quite like tunnels), and I explained to them that we were under the city, not the ocean. Then we took a tunnel out of the city that actually did go under the harbor a bit, but it started and ended in the city, so the water was never really visible. I told them that this time we were going under the water, and D said “No, it goes under the city.” I try not to argue with five year olds, so I just said, “No, it goes under the water” once and then let them debate who was right while I drove. When we came back up to the surface, it was not apparent that we’d gone under the water. C looked around and exclaimed, “D was right! It went under the city!” And D, looking very smug, said complacently, “Yeah, I was right.”