Item From the Past: Old Faithful

Seven years ago, I wrote: "Naturally we visited Old Faithful. Gotta go see Old Faithful, and wait for it to fulfill its impressive duty, which it did for us at about 6:45 pm on August 5, 2005, pretty much as the rangers predicted — at the information booth, they wrote an estimated time of eruption on a little whiteboard. I also saw it on chalkboards at other places around the geyser."

Do kids hear about Old Faithful in school any more? I think -- and I'm in no way certain -- that we discussed the geyser in second- or third-grade class, maybe because of an article in our Weekly Reader. (I'm certain that's where we heard about the exciting prospect of a new Disneyland in Florida.)

Then again, maybe I first heard of it from "Tweety, Tweety, Tweety," the Looney Tunes cartoon in which Tweety moves forward the hands of the clock predicting the next eruption of an Old Faithful-like geyser, causing it to spit out Sylvester with some force.