“You Have to Tell the Future!”

That is just what daddies do

This morning, Kina really wanted to watch a movie, and because she knows that movies are for rainy days (specifically rainy weekend days), she asked me when I expected it to start raining. Reader, I am not a meteorologist; Laurea once took a meteorology course in fulfillment of her science requirement in college, and she would regale me by phone with stories of the various sorts of clouds¹, but that makes me at best an amateur meteorologist by proxy. The closest I get to meteorology is the Weather app on my phone, which I did not have near me when my daughter demanded to know on what day and time the precipitation would begin. When I told her that I could not tell the future, and therefore could also not predict the next time she might watch a movie, she insisted that daddies’ only real talent was in telling the future, suggesting that my inability to divine storms was a massive gap in my parenting skills.

I wish I could predict the future. It’s probably my number one superpower wish, followed closely by the ability to shoot fire out of my fingers.² I won’t lie—winning the lottery is definitely one of the things I would do with magical foresight, but I’d also make more focused changes to my lifestyle based on demonstrable risk of specific diseases and probably take more risks with my career.³ Why do we want to be able to see into the future? Fear and greed, basically. But also, I would love to look into the future and know if I could afford to buy a home on a thirty-year mortgage, so that I could feel more secure about Kina’s future. Is there no college in the future? Let me teach Kina about homestead farming, then. If I could tell the future, I could know about the world I was leaving behind for my child. What would I learn about it? What would it tell me to do, in this moment? How scared should I be?

Maybe I should be careful what I wish for. We all know about snakes and apples. I’d settle for just knowing when the rain will come, so that I could stay dry and be able to start the movie on time. And fire, from my fingers—always good to keep that skill in your back pocket.

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1. Laurea went to school in California, and I have always envisioned her taking this meteorology course in an imposing stone tower at the center of the San Jose State University campus, under a massive brass telescope and a wall full of obscure gauges.

2. I’m not sure why I want to be able to shoot fire out of my fingers. It is definitely not a good wish. Really loving this new footnote feature, by the way. So much easier than what I was doing before.

3. I don’t think that’s how risks work, but you get the point. Did they introduce this footnote feature because of all the self-important neorationalists scurrying to Substack? It makes newsletters feel so much more academic, which is hilarious. This is email! Nobody should try to be smart in an email!