Dr. Free-Ride: C’mon and get out of bed. We have to leave soon.

Younger offspring: My eyes are watery.

Dr. Free-Ride: Eyes will do that sometimes.

Younger offspring: Are my eyeballs always wet?

Dr. Free-Ride: Pretty much, yeah.

Younger offspring: Are my eyeballs always squishy?

Dr. Free-Ride: Uh, I guess they are, but I’d rather not check if it’s all the same to you.

Younger offspring: But if I close my eye and press on my eyelid with my finger, my eyeball feels kind of squishy.

Dr. Free-Ride: Sure, but you wouldn’t want to press so hard that you actually squished your eyeball.

Younger offspring: No, I wouldn’t press that hard. I don’t think I could see through my eyeball if I squished it.

Dr. Free-Ride: You know, even talking about whether you could squish your eyeballs makes me kind of uncomfortable.

Younger offspring: Really, I won’t squish it. But I’d still be able to see out of the other eye.

Dr. Free-Ride: But you want both your eyes to work well. Otherwise, say goodbye to stereoscopic vision.

Younger offspring: What?

Dr. Free-Ride: You know how, in Futurama, Leela has only one eye? Because she only has one eye, she has problems with depth perception, and it’s hard for her to catch a ball or do things like that.

Younger offspring: There’s an episode where she gets two eyes and looks kind of normal.

Dr. Free-Ride: Yeah, but I’m pretty sure that the second eye was only cosmetic. She couldn’t actually see through it, so it didn’t do anything to improve her vision.

Younger offspring: She looked better with one big eye anyway.

Dr. Free-Ride: I agree.

Younger offspring: [Younger offspring's first grade teacher] said if you stick a pencil into your ear too far, you could poke out your eyeball.

Dr. Free-Ride: Um, I think the more immediate worry if you stick a pencil in your ear is that it would puncture your eardrum.

Younger offspring: But really, look (tracing the trajectory from ear to eyeball on the cheek), a pencil is long enough to go that far if you’re pushing hard enough.

Dr. Free-Ride: OK, you have persuaded me of the possibility, but we are not going to do an experiment to find out! Keep the pencils out of your ears, OK?

Younger offspring: Of course.