Brain Spill

We're at a restaurant waiting for our food. My 9yo is discussing large numbers. 

Sempi: Did you know that googol is 1 followed by 100 zeroes?

Me: Yeah. 

Sempi: And googolplex means 1 raised to the power of googol. 

Me: Technically it is 10 to the power of googol because 1 to the power of anything is just 1. 

Sempi: Ok. (whatever). 

Me: Also Google is named after googol. 

Sempi: I know. 

Me: Google's first office was called Googleplex, named after googolplex. 

Sempi: Oooh. Cool!

Vian (6yo): Is that the biggest number in the universe. 

Yoshi: I read that there aren't googolplex number of atoms in the universe.

Me: Well technically there is a number that is so unimaginably large. It is called Graham's Number.

Sempi and Vian: Oh. How many zeros does it have? 1000? 

Me: No it is so big that you can't even imagine it. (I try reading the wikipedia entry without success)

Me: I can't quite explain it very well because I don't fully understand it myself.

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Next day I'm walking Vian to school. We're doing imaginative "talk play". Vian is describing a generator in Minecraft that can produce something infinitely. 

Vian: It just keeps generating it forever. Actually that's not true, it only goes up to that number that you couldn't explain. 

Me: Graham's number? 

Vian: Yeah, that. 

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I'm so proud that Graham's number is a casual quantity in our household now. 

Vian (5yo) is curious as ever. He asked me how old I am. 

Me: I am 40. 

Vian: You know 40 is not that old for an adult. 

Me: Really? How come? 

Vian: I can count to 40 really fast and it doesn't even take that long. 

He then proceeds to demonstrate how quickly he can count from 1 to 40. 

Yoshi is making hot cocoa for everyone after our snow play day. 

Me: I think I'm going to drink all the hot chocolate that Amma is making. 

Vian (5yo): If you drink my hot chocolate, I'm going to punch you 5 million times in your face. 

Me: You can't even count that high, Vian. 

Vian: Ok then I'm going to punch you one hundred times. 

I don't know how to play Minecraft. Vian (5yo) decided he's going to educate me. We're now playing real-world Minecraft in the front yard without a computer. He's narrating various aspects of the game as he's walking around the front yard. A leather armor, iron ingot, wooden pickax, bedrock and so on. 

Then he delivers this pearl of wisdom. 

Vian: Here's a good tip. When you're in the game don't mess with me. I'm invincible and I can fly. 

Then proceeds to extol the virtues of bedrock and diamond pickax. 

The kids like to scare me by trying to jump out from under the covers and yell "BOO!". I like to pretend that I'm scared of their tactics. The other day I decided to return the favor by suddenly entering their room and yelling "BOO!". I managed to scare Vian and he started giggling in fear and shrunk back under his comforter. 

Me: Hey Vian, looks like I scared the bejeezus out of you. 

Vian: No! No! I'm not scared. I don't even have any bejeezus, so you didn't really scare any bejeezus.