9.8 meters per second squared mam

One morning, Mum, Dad, and Little Thomas, aged two or three, are having breakfast in the kitchen. After a while Mum gets up and goes over to the kitchen sink, and Dad- yes Dad- flies up and floats around under the ceiling while Thomas sits watching. What do you think Thomas says? Perhaps he points up at his dad and says: “Daddy’s flying!” Thomas will certainly be astonished, but then he very often is. Dad does so many strange things that his business of a little flight over the breakfast table makes no difference to him. Every day Dad shaves with a funny machine, sometimes he climbs onto the roof and turns the TV aerial- or else hes sticks his head under the car bonnet and comes up black in the face.
Now its Mum’s turn. She hears what Thomas says and turns around abruptly. How do you think she reacts to the sight of Dad floating nonchalantly over the kitchen table?
She drops the jam jar on the floor and screams with fright. She may even need medical attention once Dad has returned respectably to his chair.
It is not only the force of gravity we get used to as we grow. The world itself becomes a habit in no time at all.

Read Sophie’s World.
By Jostein Gaarder