One potato, two potato, three potato, four?!?

Stopped at Laurie's Restaurant before church. Our family loves going there because it's more like going to our friend Naomi's house for breakfast than actually going to a restaurant. Smiling, she practically greets us at the door with coffee and orange juice in hand. A regular red-haired font of knowledge, Naomi became the focus of my informal survey to prove that I am not as stupid as I've been seeming lately.

Some background. Last week, an over-sized mosquito swooped into my classroom causing all sorts of distraction. "Leave it alone," I said, off-handedly casual, "it's a female. They don't bite." My 4th graders paused, in awed wonder of my knowledge. "How do you know," they asked me. "You can tell by the size." When some doubted, one student defended me vigorously. "Mrs. Mosiman knows everything," he declared. Case closed. Until I got home and Brad explained what an idiot I am. "The females bite because they need the blood to produce their eggs," he informed me...confirmed by an angry trip to the Google.

Several days ago, my 4th graders and I attended our school's "Food Across America" program. As we suffered through the educational presentation on potatoes before being allowed to gobble down the hot, homemade fries, I happened to hear an eye-opening fact. "One seed potato can produce up to ten potatoes," recited the program director, valiantly trying to keep the attention of her starving audience. WHAT?!? But wait...of course this makes sense. I had never understood why someone would plant a potato to grow a potato. "Yeah," Savannah, my 4.0 RIT engineering student agreed empathetically, "I figured, eventually, potatoes would just go extinct." Disgusted, my husband had (a little) difficulty believing that his family, born and raised in Wyoming County, could not accurately describe the planting process of the potato.

Today, as we walked the dogs, I regaled my family about how goats work as a preventative measure against ringworm in cattle. Brad paused to look at me. "You are officially banned from attending 'Food Across America,'" he said, although he couldn't resist asking, "How?" I admitted that I didn't know but immediately went to the Google as soon as I got home in an attempt to validate my wavering sense of intelligence. It didn't help. Like rubbing a nickle on a sty on one's eye, the goat/ringworm theory is a little shaky in origin and implementation. I did learn that billy goats smell, especially during mating season, because they like to pee in their beards. "Did you confirm that fact using more than one resource," Brad demanded. I hung my head, "No."

So, there I was at breakfast, grilling Naomi. "Naomi," I asked, after requesting my rye toast to be lightly-toasted, "How many potatoes do you think come from one planted potato?" Without hesitation, she replied, "About ten," before rushing off to run a lighter back and forth quickly over my bread. I sighed. I was going to have to break the bad news to my 4th graders on Monday. Mrs. Mosiman doesn't know everything.