kids

"What's a 'microbe'?"

I gaze out over the flat Mediterranean at the distant, early sailboats and pretend to drink coffee whilst wondering how to answer my five year-old daughter's latest question.  She pokes me on the forearm with a fork.

"Hey, what's a 'microbe'?"

Holding my thumb and forefinger together, so:

"It's a tiny, tiny animal..."

I launch into an explanation of how the air is full of tiny little animals which are too small to be seen. My younger daughter, the four year-old, looks on incredulously; she's never been gullible enough to believe some of my ridiculous tales, and she most certainly isn't buying this one.

"Is it like a bug?"

She is buying it. Great.

"Smaller than a bug. It's really, really..."

Thumb and forefinger.

"What colour is a microbe?"

My mind frantically races, trying to think how small something has to be before it doesn't even have a colour. Wavelength of light. Microbe's a lot bigger than that, right? It dawns on me that I haven't used my brain in years.

"Umm, black. Sort of"

Lame. I'm never at my best at breakfast.

"So, why do we have to wash our hands when we eat when microbes are flying

in the air?"

I'm getting back to safer territory here. I give a mini-lecture on rudimentary

microbiology and manage, I think, to get the point across without once using the word "pathogen". I'm quite proud of myself, and sip some more coffee, musing on what a wonderful thing is the transmission of human knowledge.

"So, when we drop our food on the floor..."

My train of thought interrupted, I look up at my star pupil:

"...we have to pick it up really, really quickly before a microbe walks on it".