Ten percent sticks!

[conuly]

That's what my mother said at least once a week for my entire life - that if you just keep repeating facts and stories and more information, your child will learn some even if they're not trying. (Let's not get our causation backwards, though. She didn't tell us lots of stuff because she believed in this, she believed in this because it was a wonderful justification for doing what she wanted to do anyway, which was tell us lots of stuff.)

Ten percent sticks.

Those were words she lived by.

And those were words we've had cause to say twice this week! First, when Jenn told me she couldn't set a tea timer on her phone because the battery was only at ten percent, the phrase just popped out of my mouth without stopping by my brain first. "But ten percent sticks Jenn!"

Secondly, when we went to the diner this week for the very first time since March 2020. We used to go very frequently, all of us and also all of M's family, just meeting up and chatting and eating. But we haven't been in a long while. Anyway, Jenn for whatever reason, I forgot, brought up Juliane Diller, who, after first surviving a plane crash that killed everybody else on board, then proceeded to survive alone for 11 days in the Peruvian rainforest, using survival information she'd gotten from her father. Because, as Jenn said, ten percent sticks.

Cue Eva: "Yeah, and thanks to Connie, if I ever meet a wild linguistic in a room, I'll know just what to do!"

Comments

[dewline]

Which ten percent, though?

[conuly]

Well. I will say that the only two pieces of advice that I've given the kids and then heard them quoting to other people are "never talk to the cops without a lawyer" and "don't ever try to catch a knife if you drop it".

Which is solid advice, and I'll stand by it, but really? That's what they're gonna go with?

[chez_jae]

I've never heard that phrase before, but I like it.

:)

[conuly]

Well, you wouldn't have. I'm pretty sure my mother (my parents?) invented it on her (their?) own.

[adafrog]

:)