Smiley's Similes

Smiley has been working on his understanding of how things have different aspects.  Sometimes things resemble each other in only one minor way.  Sometimes things are completely different.

This leads to some interesting observations.

A few days ago he said:

Scuffy the Tugboat is like Noah's Ark, but different.

Well, I can't argue with that.  They are both boats, even if about as different as two boats can be.

On Wednesday we drove past a utility truck parked within some orange cones, beside a manhole.  He said:

Utility trucks are like babies, but different.

That was more puzzling.  Eventually I guided him to explain his comparison: both utility trucks and babies are noisy.

Last night he was talking about chickens and roosters and declared:

Roosters are not good.  Not good at all.

He does not like roosters, because the one at Annette's scares him with its shrill cry.  So we talked about how the rooster might protect the chickens with that noise.  I offered, "What if a fox wanted to hurt the chickens but the rooster frightened away the fox?"  The rooster could be a little bit good because it protected the chickens, even if it was not all good because it was not friendly to Smiley.  Then he mimicked, "Or an elephant would hurt the chickens but the rooster scared it away."  Um, okay.