“If you’re hungry, and in a pit, it’s better to have a ladder than something to eat.”

— my daughter

This newly-minted aphorism resulted from a rather delightful cognitive leap, btw. She — my daughter — was eating her first toasted English muffin (with butter and cinnamon sugar) (her first, because I tend to stick to whole wheat, bought-at-the-healthfood-store type food, but I’d made Eggs Benedict for New Year’s Day breakfast and have some leftover ingredients on hand, now)

and I mentioned that the only thing better than a store-bought English muffin was a homemade English muffin.

At which point, the child attempted to articulate something about the irrelevance of a homemade English muffin when she had a perfectly delicious storebought one, with butter and cinnamon sugar, right at hand.

What she was trying to get to, but being age seven didn’t have the precise words, was to argue for the importance of context.

So absent the ability to articulate an abstraction as an abstraction, she came up with the “hungry and in a pit” analogy.

I love my kid :-)