In Nora Ephron’s romantic comedy Sleepless in Seattle (1993), 8-year-old Jonah Baldwin is considering taking a commercial flight from Seattle to New York and asks his girlfriend Jessica: “How much would it cost to go?” Jessica answers: “No one knows. It changes practically every day.” It may seem odd that young Jessica, precocious though she may be, would know about the prices of commercial airline flights. But her parents, if memory serves, were travel agents working out of their home. So Jessica had probably heard her parents discussing prices, (even a romantic comedy must make some concessions to verisimilitude). But the question becomes, why are Jessica’s lines funny? I would venture that it’s the first part of it: “No one knows.” Young Jessica seems to have made a mind-blowing discovery: Adults don’t know everything. Who knew? It’s been a while since I was a kid, but I must think that if third graders, like...(Read Full Article)