Rings

Some dolphins broke the waves, leaping out of the water close to the shore.

"Hey, check it out! Dolphins!" I said.

"Dolphins?" she asked, looking out towards the ocean.

"You know, like porpoises or something. They’re sea mammals, quite intelligent... I read somewhere that they’re learning how to use computers to talk to us."

"I don't know, I’ve never heard of them. But they look really neat!" she said.

I thought that it was kind of weird that she claimed to have never heard of dolphins, but I kept in mind that she might have forgotten them, too. Usually when she heard a name or saw an animal, she recognized it, so this deviation from the precedent seemed exceptionally strange.

Sometimes that happened, though. We ran into things that she'd never heard of or experienced, like coffee, and now, dolphins, and although it was strange, it didn't really matter to me.

Like ripples on the water