Air Quotes

Oliver got up from the dinner table where we'd sat and the children ate bow-tie pasta with olive oil and parmesan cheese, tiny French green beans and sea salt. Here in Los Angeles, we've had the "pleasure" of viewing enormous billboards proclaiming the end of the world, imminent, for months. While my boys laugh and scoff at the whole thing, they also seem a bit nervous, particularly Oliver. During dinner I reassured him that we lived right down the street from the La Brea Tar Pits, where the bones of animals literally millions of years old lie buried in tar. We are just specks in a long continuum that will go on forever and ever, probably as long as our lifetimes and way, way beyond, I said. Henry stated that if it were really the end of the world tomorrow, he wished that he hadn't gone to school.

As we cleared the table, Oliver said to me, using air quotes on the word last:

I'm going to take my "last" bath, Mom.