What age are kids in ‘pre-k’? I’m imagining like 3-4 years old? I wouldn’t be surprised at that working with some kids that age. Not saying I think the story is true necessarily, but just that young kids are very trusting, don’t always put together information they get in different settings, and don’t really discuss weekend plans with each other much.
2 units (in this case houses) down and 2 across (a perhaps intentional misinterpretation of the original slightly ambiguous statement). Reasonable to assume down and across are perpendicular directions. Let’s pretend space-time is Euclidean. How far away is the listener from the sneeze? Pythagoras, our faithful companion, guides our understanding…√(2²+2²)=√8=2√2