Phone home, I texted him. (I wonder if he got the reference.)
Ok soon, he responded.
Hours later he did.
We talked about his classes. We talked about his friends. We talked about the weather and his plans for next semester and for the summer. It always makes us smile ear-to-ear to hear him talk about this stuff. And we made some reference to the latest news from Fukushima.
“Oh the upgrade from 4 to 6?” he asked.
I thought he was referring to the TEPCO dithering of a few weeks ago in deciding whether the plant failure was less serious than Three Mile Island or as serious.
“No,” I said with a certain tone in my voice. “That’s from 3 weeks ago.”
I am so up on the news, you know, reading BBC and my news feeds. That news was oh so 3 weeks ago.
And then I wake up this morning to the news that TEPCO has upgraded the disaster from a 5 to a 7. Off by one, but he knew exactly what he was talking about. And Mr. Know-It-All owes his son an apology.