Parenting teaches you all kinds of things that you never expected to need to know. What's your unexpected "now I know that?"

Truly, I probably have a thousand examples, but the most recent:My college aged daughter's best friend (B) is from China. She was in the states on a student visa, and her father had a pretty catastrophic financial reverse in November. He couldn't pay her tuition for winter semester, which meant that B's student visa was no longer valid.Dad also couldn't afford all of B's plane ticket home, so I scraped up some and found the rest of the balance in the sofa cushions and the grocery budget. B's ticket was for Sunday, and by then, the coronavirus news was breaking. Along with news about the shortage of effective facemasks in China.I could not send the child home without those. So now I know that N95 masks are the good stuff, that my cousin could get them for me in 40-packs after hours (on a perfectly legal emergency basis) from the medical supply house where she has plenty of seniority, and that 400 of them take up the luggage space of four pairs of jeans and two t-shirts. (I sent enough to last her immediate family long enough for me to send another ten packs.)We gon' be eating beans until summer, but... I now know more than I ever wanted about face masks!(On a lighter note, I also know a lot about the chemistry and biology of farts, thanks to the fact that my 8yo is a total barbarian.) via /r/Parenting https://ift.tt/2O853hN