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6.Nov.2003

My five year old has said a lot of things that have made me laugh till I wanted to wet my pants. She's like that. Witty, charming and delightfully intelligent behind those baby blues and blond curls.

Tonight she saw me sucking on an orange and wanted one too. I told her I'd cut some up and they were on the table. I followed her into the kitchen and watched her pick up an orange slice. Before she put it into her little rose bud mouth, she said "I want a healthy colon."

I choked and spit some orange out through my nose. Please note: citrus through nostrils is not a fun experience. When I recovered enough to talk, I asked her, "Did you just say you wanted a healthy colon?"

She nodded and mumbled "mm hmm" around the juicy orange slice in her mouth.

"Do you know what a colon is?" I questioned her.

She shook her head no.

I asked her if she thought that eating oranges would keep her colon healthy and she shook her head yes.

Laughing, I walked back into the kitchen and put my orange peel into the garbage.

I want a healthy colon. Well, who doesn't? It wasn't so much that she was talking about colons per se, but that she had just regurgitated something that she'd obviously heard on television. It reminded me of a day last summer when she walked up to me and asked for a piece of paper to draw on. She was four years old at the time and she knew that the payment I extract for a piece of precious printer paper is one kiss.

We kissed and then she said, "Vehix dot com."

I laughed.

"What did you say?" I asked.

"Vehix dot com Mom! It's where you go to desire your own car!" She then toddled off to create something on her blank piece of paper. Desire my own car. I guess she got that right.

Blank pieces of paper...blank little minds: Both slates to be written on and both extremely hard to erase when the wrong thing is inscribed. This is why I am in a race to put the right things in their little heads before the outside world fills up all that gray matter with things that don't, well... matter.

As the mother of four children, ranging in age from five to fourteen, I have my work cut out for me. My two youngest still sing Primary songs in the bathtub while I'm washing their hair, but my two older children have long since given up that adorable habit. Not that I'm allowed in the bathroom while either one of them are in the shower anymore. This is a good thing, as modesty is a trait we value and try to instill in our children. Modesty is something that goes against all that the world pushes on our impressionable young ones. Even though we do our best, the media, as well as some of their peers, have an influence upon our children that is difficult to compete with. But compete we must.

I'm ok with her wanting a healthy colon. I'm even ok with her desiring a car. I'm not so ok with orange juice blowing out my nose, but I'll recover. I'm also not ok with her growing up so fast in a world that seems determined to take away childhood innocence at light speed.

So, I'll keep giving her slices of oranges to keep her colon healthy and when she's old enough, I'll even let her design her own car if Vehix.com is still around. Until then, I'll try to keep putting good things in her head and keep trying to keep the bad things out. I'll also be more careful when I'm eating orange slices.

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