Heat

My mother in law, Mary spent some time at our house at the end of last week, and on Saturday morning she and I were sitting around the kitchen table chatting and telling each other funny stories. At one point, one of us must have said something hilariously funny, because we both were able to get a good, hard laugh.

"Did you know that laughing supposedly burns 17 calories a minute?" Mary informed me.

"Yes, and did you know kissing burns 14 calories a minute?!" I countered.

At this point, Jeremy had entered the room. My inquisitive 1st grader asked us what a calorie was, so Mary and I spent a few moments explaining to him that a calorie is simply a measurement of heat-1 calorie is equal to the amount of heat it would take to break apart 1 g of any specific substance.

His brow furrowed in thought, he pondered the definition of a calorie for a moment. Mary and I looked at him, waiting for it to all make sense in his head. After a moment, he finished processing and asked a question:

"So....does that mean if you kiss too much you get overheated?"


Of course, once Mary and I burned at least 100 calories of laughter apiece, we assured him that indeed-kissing too much would certainly overheat a person.

Someday he'll learn just exactly how astute his observation was.