symmetrical

The children caught a comment that their mother made about Casper's asymmetry (by which she was referring to his floppy ear, multidirectional teeth, and the eye that tends to squint on its own) and were curious about what the word meant.


We explained that the fact that their brother's features aren't exactly balanced doesn't make him a freak -- in fact, studies have shown that faces which have been digitally altered to be perfectly symmetrical seem uncanny and unpleasant. To give them an example, we took some of their better pictures and flopped them over to show what they might look like if their features were perfectly balanced, and this is the fun we came up with:


Our conclusions? Well, that it's funny and silly to see yourself this way. That freckles are not evenly distributed. It also appears to us that Linus has the most symmetrical features of the three. And that Casper looks like the Weekly World News's Bat Boy when he's totally symmetrical:

(To be fair, this was a strange angle to begin with. I should also confess -- something which usually gets a parent in trouble -- that Casper has a grin which is the most infectious and adorable thing I've ever seen, and that he may end up being the best looking of the bunch.)