Chapter 31

The Trips, Venus, Vendy and Vesti, but also Ellen, Helen and Mellon (Me-lon) because they have dual citizenship, have their own language. We speak to them in Finn, English, Swedish and Southern-fried.

This age is perfect for learning different languages. They already make all the sounds there are; now they're 'sorting.' The sounds WE don't use get discarded and lost.

I could hear them clicking, glottal stopping and fricativing (New word) to each other. Eventually, they came to a consensus, and Venus Ellen crawled over to me, pulled herself up by my pantleg, kicked me in the shin ... to make sure she had my attention ... and said, "Daddy, where are the Galapagos?"

A complete interrogative sentence, Galapagos was properly pronounced, confounded me.

The Trips had hitherto been limited to Ma-Ma, Da-Da, and potty ... the three important things in life.

Oh ... and Mine! They know that word ... all too well. Mine has caused a lot of grief.

Okay, I thought, I'll play along. I got out the chart of the Panama area and environs. I unrolled the Pacific Equatorial chart and put the two next to each other. They were the same scale.

I picked her up and said, "We're here." I put the point of my pencil on the map.

"What is here?"

"Fort Amador," I said.

"Why?"

"Because Texaco is here."

"Texaco is fuel?"

"Yes."

Because there is a schedule that must be kept, we ran the engines a lot and needed to bunker.

"Okay. We understand."

The rest of her conspirators nodded.

That didn't make a lot of sense to me ... they were all the way across the salon.

"Galapagos is here." I put my pencil on the group.

"Okay. We're going there?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"It's a science lesson for your brother and sister."

"Okay. Put me down."

She waddled over ... bottoming out a couple of times ... to her sisters. They chirped, warbled and clacked to each other. Then the three of them looked at me and beamed.

"Wendy?"

"David?"

"Do you know what your triplets just did?"

"They talked to you?"

"What?"

"They've been talking to each other since they were nine months old." Wendy paused, "Who did they send?"

"Venus," I said.

"She's oldest."

"By fifteen and thirty minutes."

"Think about it, how many minutes have they had?"

I did the math for a year in my head and cut it in half. They'd been doing the talking to each other for about six months, "263,520," I said.