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让时间停下来
(2012年4月14日)
前几天给骏骏买的 The Mysteries of the Bermuda Triangle,今天傍晚拿出来读给他听。读到一半时,晚饭准备好了,我说:“OK. Let's stop here. We can read the rest after supper.”骏骏大声抗议:“No! I want to read it NOW!”我只好退让半步:“Well, just one more chapter. After that, you shall go to the table.”骏骏勉强答应了。多读了一章之后,骏骏虽然仍意犹未尽,仍乖乖地跟我去吃晚饭了。
骏骏吃饭一向比较磨蹭,有时想问题而忘了咀嚼,有时忙于说话而忘了吃饭,有时翻翻书或玩玩东西。为了让他专心吃饭,我对他说:“If you can finish eating in 30 minutes, you can read the rest of that book after supper. Otherwise, you have to wait until tomorrow to read it.”
这一招果然有效,骏骏专心地吃起饭来,速度也比平时快了。但好景不长,他又开小差了,我只好时不时地提醒他:“25 minutes left... 20 minutes left.”
提醒了两三次,我又改变了方法,对骏骏说:“I have an idea. Maybe we can stop the clock. Then time will stop, and you can eat as slowly as you like.”
骏骏愣了一下,然后笑道:“No. Even though you stop this clock, the other clocks are still going on.”
我又提议:“If we stopped all the clocks in the world, time would surely stop.”
骏骏大笑:“Silly Daddy! Time can never be stopped. And you can never go back to the last minute.”
我心中暗想:“这小子倒是明白时间并不依赖时钟而存在。”
见骏骏明白时间失去永不回来,我顺势提醒他:“If you lose something, you might be able to find it later. But if you waste you time, you can never get it back. There are 15 minutes left.”
骏骏把手中玩着的小夹子丢开,专心地吃起来。他吃完时,我还没吃完。我高兴地说:“Ok, you can go to read the rest of that book now.”骏骏离开饭桌,自己把剩下的部分读完了。
在睡前的闲聊中,我们又谈到了时间。我说:“Time is really amazing. If you can travel nearly as fast as light, time will slow down. When you travel at the speed of light, time will stop.”骏骏问:“If you can travel faster than light, will time go backward?”我对此也了解不深,只好简单地说:“It's possible in theory. But in our universe, as far as we know, nothing can go faster than light.”骏骏说:“When I grow up, I want to build a spacecraft that can go faster than light.”
画蛇添足,顺便记录一下我们睡前闲聊中讲到的另一个话题。
骏骏说:“The skull protects my brain. The skin protects my skull. The hair protects my skin. The air protects my hair. The mosquito net protects the air. The building protects the mosquito net. The cloud protects the building....”骏骏就这样一直延伸到外太空去了。
我模仿他的句子,换一种说法:“...The building is on the earth. The earth is in the solar system. The solar system is in the milky way. The milky way is in the universe.”
说到这里,我停顿了一下。骏骏想当然地以为我说完了,正要接话,我突然说:“The universe is in the university!”
骏骏哈哈大笑:“No! A university is not big enough to hold the universe. It's IN the universe.”
我一本正经地说:“I think a university is a city full of universes.”
听到这里,骏骏已经笑弯腰了。 |
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