Twin Paradox

The standard twin paradox is a result of Einstein's special theory of relativity. It goes like this: You have twins. You stick one twin in a spaceship and fly him to a distant star at some significant fraction of the speed of light. The other twin stays at home, keeps his parents up at night (some of the time), grows to adulthood, etc. In the reference frame of the spaceship, time passes slowly compared to the reference frame of the Earth. The trip takes a only few years for the spacefaring twin, but he returns home as a vigorous young man to find his decrepit brother on the front porch in a rocker with a grey beard down to his knees, whittling. Or something like that.

This is not the twin paradox Dane and I are currently experiencing. NASA finally gave me an email address, but they're not letting me blast babies into space yet. (Yet!)

The twin paradox at our house goes like this: Again, you take twins. Let's call them A and B. You send twin A to the hospital with his father, and twin B stays at home with his mother. The mother, foolish woman, lets twin B sleep in her bed and nurses him any time he looks like him might think about making a peep during the night. She simultaneously fails to notice that he is getting hungry a lot, and therefore does not introduce solid foods as soon as she should. By the time twin A returns home, twin B (who previously slept 10 hours at night) likes to wake up every three hours to eat. Time passes with both babies at home. Twin A sleeps well; twin B wakes up and eats a lot. The babies remain rosy-cheeked infants; the parents age copiously. Now, here comes the paradox. On the night (the very night!) that twin B finally returns to sleeping through the night, his brother decides to cut two teeth and keep the parents up ALL NIGHT LONG.

I hope these kids like Tang.