Lessons from Shorty n Stretch

Somebody call 911!!

On Friday evening, as my lady-bugs and I made our way home, I had popped a CD into the player in the car and half of a recent Billboard Top 100 began to play. (Thanks, Eyvi - BTW). My girls are pretty interested in music (no surprise there, really) and usually enjoy that type on our commute. We listened to a few of my favs ... they rocked out to some 'Peas' ... "Tonight's Gonna Be A Good Night" and "Boom Boom Pow" were big hits ... they also really like "Say Hey" (Michael Franti) ... but then (as we were nearing the house) Sean Kingston's new song came on. For anyone who has an interest in hearing it, you can follow this link: Call 911 (dumb-ass video, though)

Well! "Bee" ... aka, "Shorty" (a nick name given long before I realized it was the new call name for a chick by hip hop singers...) pipes up and say (rather emphatically, I might add) "Hmph ... this is a bad song! You can't just call 911 whenever you want... he's bad ... the police will be cross with him for calling 911. Mommy, is 'shorty' really on fire??? Can you catch on fire just from dancing?" I will point out that this child is FOUR ... and this was the first time she had ever heard this song.

I assured her that nobody was on fire, for realz and then explained what 'figure of speech' means. She gnawed on that for the rest of the night and by Saturday morning was walking around the house singing the chorus and explaining to the degus and the dog that nobody was actually on fire... ergo - no call to 911 was necessary.

Then yesterday, we had a load of wood delivered to our yard. It came in eight foot lengths, so it pretty much still looked like trees. Shorty was fascinated with the whole process - the delivery, the 'dumping' of the wood onto their sand pile ... the big truck. She was enthralled, really. After the truck left, she ran to the other end of the house to retrieve her sister, "Bug" (aka Stretch - in oppostion to Shorty, of course). A few minutes and some mild scrapping later, Stretch came out with Shorty and proceeded to go and look out into the yard.

The last thing I heard was a deep sigh, before she launched into her litany about the environment - aghast at the fact that we would cut down trees ... LIVING TREES just to burn for our own selfish reasons ... WRONG - WRONG - WRONG. Shorty was explaining that we needed the wood from the trees to keep our house warm in the winter, but Stretch didn't want any part of that ... nope ... her response (which she planted firmly over her sister's pleas) was that "the needs of the environment surpass the needs of our family" ... great, I gave birth to a tree hugger.

Not that I am not environmentally minded. I really do try to reduce energy consumption and recycle, and compost. I spent the next HOUR of my day explaining the difference between the oil we are currently burning and the concept of using wood instead. Now, she runs around turning the heat off - as we are heathen-ous destroyers of Earth with our oil and our wood fires.

Don't get me wrong, I am way proud of her. It has had an impact on her consumption of electricity as well as her wardrobe choice while inside the house. She has now become the slipper and blanket police. I have a funny feeling that may change once we start dipping below 0 degrees celcius every night ... but it is a good lesson, I suppose.

All in all ... I guess somewhere we are doing something right where rearing offspring is concerned. They are socially and environmentally aware ... so if we could dial down the annoying a titch - we'd be all set!! *pats self on back for job done well*.

Off you go, to have your day - armed with the lessons learned from Dani's offspring ... it's a public service, this blog of mine *smiles big saucy smile*.