Overheard:
Non-Parent Adult: If you want to get that, it will cost $25.
12-Year-Old: Are you serious? That’s two allowances plus a full report card of A’s!
I wish my life worked like that. “Hi, I’ll have a grande mocha and a classic coffee cake, please. Here’s my report card with one A and a C to cover the cost.”
Politicians love to defend the Pledge of Allegiance almost as much as they like to oppose burning our nation’s flag. The wholesome, patriotic, downright American tradition of reciting a pledge of loyalty in schools every morning is the sort of thing only an America-hating terrorist would ever oppose.
Unless, of course, you believe that America stands for theological freedom, and find the phrase “under God” at odds with certain religious beliefs. Or you believe that America stands for political freedom, and find the entire notion of mandating allegiance from citizens a bit… Red.
I always got hung up on the “under God” bit. I’m on the record of being in favor of liberty and justice for all. Rainbows and puppy dogs aren’t half bad either. But then some clown crammed an “under God” in the middle of the thing (nearly 60 years after the pledge was first coined, mind you), and didn’t even add meaningful content with it. Instead, the extra appositive phrase just makes the whole sentence almost impossible to parse to a child who’s still trying to get the hang of correctly conjugating the word “is” on a regular basis.
But apart from the atrocious grammatical implications, the phrase implies a certain basic religion: that God presides over our country. Thus anyone who believes in more or fewer Gods than just the one is unable to faithfully pledge their allegiance to the entire country, if following the scripted pledge.
While this makes for an interesting academic argument (and occasionally affords politicians some good sound bites), and while I still believe it wholeheartedly, it may overlook some important details.
My daughter, now in kindergarten, was playing quietly in the living room this morning when she spontaneously launched into this recitation:
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the bepuplic for which it stands: one nation, under God, in-invisible, with ligerty and jujace for all.
So she’s not developing a sense of God watching over us, or of mandatory loyalty to an ineffable and eternal nation. She’s trying to figure out what a bepublic is and what made it invisible.
When I changed the channel to see which episode of The Simpsons was on tonight, Sophie got excited immediately. She leapt up and announced:
It’s Homer Fenster!
Uh oh. That can’t be good.
Sophie has earned her first-ever allowance. Beginning this week, she gets $5 every Monday to spend on anything she wants (that she’s allowed to have).
This strategic amount allows her to buy a few small items immediately, or save it for just one week to get a bigger toy in the $10 range. Being a generally responsible child, she listened patiently to my explanation of how an allowance would work and why she might want to save it, and then tucked the money safely in a wallet she’s apparently had stashed away.
And to celebrate, we took a trip to the Dollar Store. As Sophie browsed and weighed the pros and cons of buying each toy she encountered, Mom reminded her that she might want to save some money, in case she needed to buy anything later in the week. Her response, with the most exasperation I’ve ever heard her use:
Mommy, did you forget? I’ll get more money!
Well, that’s almost what we were hoping to teach.
Tonight began like so:
Sophie: Can we play dolls? Please, please can we play dolls?
No. No, we cannot.
Instead, we took my globe off the bookcase and played the classic “spin it and point to a place” game. When the real globe got boring, we switched to Google Earth, and zoomed into Street View in each of the places Sophie picked. Thus we had a little world geography lesson combined with fancy computer graphics to occupy our imaginations.
Next we switched to my lunar globe and naturally started talking about how people have walked on the moon. This naturally lead to YouTube videos and footage from Apollo 13 of Saturn V liftoffs, men bouncing across an alien surface, and ocean splashdowns.
Tonight ended like so:
Sophie: (running down the hall with a kite in tow) 5… 4… 3… 2… 1… blast off!
Now we’re talkin’.
Sophie, upon waking up from a dream (in a matter-of-fact tone):
Do aliens come at night or in the morning?
Of course, everyone who’s seen the movie Aliens knows the answer. In Newt’s own words, “They mostly come at night… mostly.”
And now, a moment of terror brought to you by Sophie:
Sophie: There’s a butt on Mommy’s head and Daddy’s head! Run for your lives! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!
(30 seconds of complete silence)
Sophie: (deadpan) That was a close one.
It was like War of the Worlds for the modern era.
When we warned Sophie of her impending bath yesterday, she naturally protested. Hoping to remind her that clean and conditioned hair is less tangled than dirty hair, this is the debate that ensued:
Sophie: (adamantly) I don’t want to take a bath!
Mommy: Do you want it to owie when I brush your hair tomorrow?
Sophie: (perfect deadpan) Yes. I love owies.
(long pause while Mommy and I laugh uproariously)
Sophie: Well… maybe not…
It’s really difficult to compete logically with a four-year-old child who understands the power of sarcasm.
Only a child can instill a true feeling of unconditional love. I had this conversation with Sophie when we woke up this morning:
Sophie: Don’t look at me!
Me: Why not?
Sophie: Because I don’t love you a lot! I only love you a little bit.
At least I’m still up for consideration.
Sophie keeps a picture on her desk of me reading her a story when she was about two years old. The book featured was Nancy Hazbry’s How to Get Rid of Bad Dreams: a traumatic story offering graphic detail on a variety of bad dreams children might have, with advice on how to counter them.
For example, one page offers this sample of a delightful childhood lark:
If you dream you are being attacked by one-hundred-and-ninety-nine billion black, scary, hairy bugs with green eyes and red stingers, don’t worry.
All you have to do is…
An illustration of an enormous, hideous black ant fills the page. Fortunately, by turning the page, the reader can find the solution to such a dream:
whip out a can of silver paint and spray it all over the bugs, then take a deep breath and blow them into the sky . That will make one-hundred-and-ninety-nine billion new glittering stars.
I found it rather disconcerting, but at the time Sophie was too excited to have me reading her a story to register any of its content. Since then, the story has become legend in her world, and when I asked what story she wanted to read tonight, she announced “The Monster Book” as her preference.
Unfortunately, her collection of books is large, and The Monster Book was nowhere to be found. I offered alternatives:
Me: How about the Green Eggs and Ham book we read yesterday?
Sophie: I want The Monster Book!
Me: What about one of these new books you got for Christmas?
Sophie: I really want The Monster Book!
Me: Ooh! You have The Princess and the Frog! You loved that movie! Should we read this book?
Sophie: (fake tears pouring out) I really want The Monster Book!
We searched through her bookcase, one book at a time. She even insisted that we consult the picture of me reading it last time to be sure we’d recognize it today. About halfway through her collection, we found it.
She jumped eagerly into bed (one of the few times this has ever happened), and curled up to hear the legendary story, her level of excitement waning with each frightening new scenario.
And when I turned the last page, she sat silent for a moment. And then:
Sophie: (incredulously) Why did you read me The Monster Book? Now I’m gonna have bad dreams!
As a software developer — essentially a trained logician — I really can’t formulate a good rebuttal to that.