Daddy's Home by Tony Rubino and Gary Markstein for April 14, 2010

Yes, “it” did, but like they say, “…it” happens!

”Joe”, you ever focus a magnifying glass on an ant when the sun is out? If not, you don’t want to know what happens.

So what happened??

Ugh! Fried ants.

“It happened!” Let’s not start that again!!!

This reminds me of all the unfortunate things I did when I was a kid. We thought frying ants with a magnifying glass was a riot.

Now I’m more or less horrified at what we did. Sort of.

Now if I was the dad, my first reaction would be to punish the kids. On second thought though, I think the best thing to do is to ignore it and trust that the kids will survive their own foolishness.

Maybe some parents can find ways to have non-shaming discussions about things like this.

Alex, I’m not sure non-shaming is the way to go with this one. Shame does have its uses, and frying ants is a shameful thing to do.

“So you see Maria, an ant has three main body parts: the head, the thorax and the abdomen…and see those little jaw-like features near its mouth? Those are called mandibles…Oh, hey dad, didn’t see you standing there…”

@shytimes2: I saw Bill Nye on Fox News a few weeks ago.

There’s something kind of fantastic about that, isn’t there?

True, Coyoty. It was that tiny puff of smoke that always got to me.

I was always too impatient to wait for the magnifying glass to work. I just poured gasoline on their mounds and lit them.