How Wide is the Ocean?

Brenda, our youngest, reminded me of a Daddy Tale the other day and I think it’s worth repeating just because it’s so like him. One summer all the children, spouses, grandchildren, and Jim and I set off for a week in Florida. We also took a teenaged baby sitter named Elizabeth, who had been warned by Brenda about the genius and his “math” ways.

One evening we were all sitting peacefully on the balcony of one of our condos when he said out of the blue, “We’re on the twelfth floor, and assuming that each story is twelve feet high, and knowing the circumference of the earth, how far would we be able to look out over the ocean before the curvature of the earth interfered with our sight?”

Brenda said the look on Elizabeth’s face was priceless.