Books are Fired

Thursday

Mar312016

The details are not mine to share, but there's a thing that happened last week that caused a ripple through Alexis' world. It was a very not good sort of ripple which left her asking lots of very grown-up questions.

Hard questions.

Questions I won't be able to answer no matter how long I may live.

The questions have led to some very good conversations. While I would have preferred to delay those conversations for a few years, the fact that she asked the questions was a positive thing. Still, there reached a point a couple of days ago where I told her that it was time to make a written list of her questions because she kept doing that thing that kids do where she was flopping and flipping and tossing out new topics for conversation so fast that I was dizzy. I mean, it probably made sense in her head to ask if she can list glitter as her favorite color just before she asked what happens to your body after you die and are buried in a casket, but STAAAAAAAAHHHHHP. A list was a good way of getting her to think of all of the questions and formulate the right way to ask them.

So she did.

And it was good.

After answering the entirety of the list, I was DONE. Exhausted. Mentally drained. Stupid, even. I was in no way prepared for any more questions, especially not the one that fell out of Alexis' face the next day after I returned home from an extra long day of work.

"Can I get my belly button pierced?" she asked.

My brain responded with agoibjWPRGLNAEFLwoghvLKdsnKLANGKNA. In other words, I just stood there drooling.

"I want to get a lot of things pierced," she continued.

I continued to drool.

It wasn't until a day later that I managed to come up with some sort of comeback. I finally figured out that it would be helpful if I knew WHY she was suddenly asking about piercings, of all things.

"Because in my book, the girl got her belly button pierced and she's in fifth grade. That means I can do mine next year, right?" she replied.

And that is the very long story that explains why books are now banned in our house. All books. Banned. No more reading about piercings for fifth graders!