Rosie and I were sitting at the kitchen table talking about sperm. See, my

wife, whose inclinations are artistic and terpsichorean, looks to me as a

fount of knowledge about all matters scientific. She’d been reading

something about frozen sperm, and wondered how it is possible for sperm to

survive freezing. After all (she reasoned) they are living tissue. Living

tissue is made of cells. Cells are basically little bags of water. Water

expands when you freeze it, so the bag’s going to burst. So how can sperm

survive freezing?

I didn’t have a clue. You won’t catch me without an answer, though, so I

made an intelligent guess. We batted the thing back and forth a couple of

times, then 11-year-old Nellie came in and caught a bit of the conversation.

Nellie: “Eiuw, sperm. We did that in school.”

Me (not wanting to make a big mysterious thing out of it): “Well, it’s only

science.”

Nellie: “Yeah, but it’s not *regular* science, that stuff. It’s eiuw

science.”

So now you know. There’s regular science, and there’s eiuw science. I sort

of see her point.