Light as an egg

We are talking about weight. Earlier in the day, I had come across a scale at the gym, and weighed myself; now, I'm asking Cleo if she wants to guess how much I weigh. "You weigh about 36 pounds," I remind her. "I weigh much more than that. I weigh about five times as much as you.So how much do you think I weigh?"

She deliberates. She purses her lips. Thinks a little while longer. And then comes to a decision.

"29 pounds?"

"That's a terrible guess!" I say, simultaneously honest and tactless, and urge her to revise her estimate.

But later in the day, I'm reminded of a story about Erik Satie, the unconventional and irreverent composer whose behavior sometimes verged on the impish. (The directives scattered throughout his compositions are legendary among musical historians: "Like a nightingale with a toothache," reads one; "Light as an egg," another). Supposedly, a publisher once offered him a certain amount of money to compose a series of piano pieces, as an accompaniment to a suite of watercolors called Sports and Diversions. Satie, however, refused - until the publisher agreed to pay him a smaller sum.

Those resulting pieces, writes Norman Lloyd in The Golden Encyclopedia of Music, are charming. And so, too, is my little girl, as she struggles to learn mathematical relationships and large sums.