Yet more proof that my son Silas is a chromosomal anomaly - here's a picture of him with his grandmother:

                                                       

How do we get from midget short to mutant tall in just two generations?

Well, I have heard that Ethel, during her young, rebellious days, handcuffed herself to a chain-link fence around a nuclear power plant.
 I've not been able to ascertain, exactly, just what she was hoping to accomplish by this action, but I'm not too sure that her intentions were fully conscious (since I'm not sure that SHE was, either). Ethel was a bit of a "joiner" in her youth - if she saw a bunch of folks heading out to chain themselves to a chain-link fence, then she probably joined up with 'em because she didn't have anything else to do right then.

She might have stopped, along the way, and said to herself "gee, if these folks think that nuclear power plants aren't safe, then maybe we shouldn't be chaining ourselves to one of them" - but that implies a level of introspection that Ethel was not yet capable of exercising.

A person from a smarter gender might have extended the above if/then statement to say "....perhaps - just perhaps - if these folks are that dumb, then why should I assume that there IS anything wrong with nuclear power plants? Obviously, these folks aren't the ones that I should be asking for nuclear engineering specifications".

However, since the people who were gong out to lock themselves to what they saw as a symbol of death and destruction were probably dressed cool, and acting cool, then Ethel was at a loss to resist - at that time, she was doing her best to be cool.

So now, as a possible result of this little protest march, we have our own private Lummox to pull things down from the top shelves for us - and from above the cabinets, and from on top of the house....