Whale, Technically…

Our family (parents, two siblings, and I) is on a long road trip. This is before iPads or mobile screens, so we’re keeping occupied the old-fashioned way: games and talking. I can read books in the car, but my siblings get car sick from doing that, so my dad is sharing interesting facts from a book. 

Until he gets to a fact that sounds like he meddled with it:

Dad: “If you stretch out an adult blue whale from end to end on a professional basketball court… the game would be cancelled.”

Me: *Looking up from my book.* “Wait… that’s the fact?”

Dad: “Well, it would be cancelled, so I’m correct.”

Fourteen-Year-Old Brother: “Not necessarily true if there wasn’t a game scheduled at the time you were ruining that whale.”

Mom: “Gross!”

Fourteen-Year-Old Brother: “So it would be technically correct only based on timing.”

Dad: “If you took into account how often a game is played on the court, and how long it would take to clear away that much whale, it’s very likely that at least one game would be cancelled.”

Fourteen-Year-Old Brother: “That depends on…”

Cue a long and drawn-out argument of “technically correct” points that end up going nowhere except still resulting in a poor landlocked whale. Eventually, the argument dies down, and my little brother says:

Seven-Year-Old Brother: “I have a fun fact to share!”

We tell him to go for it.

Seven-Year-Old Brother: “If you took all the elephants on Earth and stacked them on top of each other… they would all die.”

Mom: “Okay, can we play something, anything, else, please?!”