P wakes up with questions. Daily. They typically leave me wondering just what kind of processing is going on in that brain each night :) So I wrench my head from its fog and fight my tendency to over-answer... (or snore and not answer;) To keep it simple and skip what I'd like him to learn, and instead to provide exactly what he's searching for. I try to just give him the information he's looking for and then follow the connections his little mind makes between these new factoids and his current interests, which leads him to more questions... then those answers makes more connections... that lead to more questions :) So, inevitably, he keeps digging (which I much prefer to zoned drooling - which is equally inevitable whenever I slip into an "informative" Mama monologue:) At any rate, we're typically in bed for an hour after he wakes up.
This morning I blinked awake to "Mama, what's a GMO?" Erm... Those pesky, healthy eardrums;) This morning's questions eventually led to Monsanto (said with a gag). Since P tends towards worry, I try to keep things uplifting whenever he asks about the horrors of the world (which, by anyone's standards, the category of "world horrors" has to include Monsanto:). (Just as an aside, it was nigh impossible to choose which link to use for this monstrous megacorp, so there's quite a few there...)
Disregarding my aforementioned "only tell what's asked" standard, I tried to spin the sinister doings of GMO giants with a hopeful tale of seed savers. Also as aforementioned, the child would have none of it. It wasn't the angle his head was headed.
No. But he was problem solving, too. However, there were no arctic seed banks, no small seed companies, no gardener shares in his scenario. He was thinking of something a little, um, bigger. More testosterone filled.
"Mama, you know what I'm gonna do? I'm going to go to computer school. And learn how to search on the internet. Then I'm going to find out where these companies are, and you know what I'm gonna do? Take a wrecking ball and knock 'em down. I'll call all of the people out of the building... and I'll wreck it down!"
His vision expanded from there. In addition to the crane/wrecking ball combo, canons, dynamite and land mines (which he would bury in the basement and then run out, Super Phoenix style, before they could blast) featured prominently into his vivid plans. So did a large semi-truck, which he planned on ramming into the building. I was fairly shocked at how fluidly demolition functioned in his young mind. A mind that has been "world news" free... Well, everyone has to have a natural gift, right? Ummm....
But the best, the absolute best part, was his sense of justice in it all. He momentarily considered placing the company people in the hands of the police, but quickly reconsidered. No. Instead, he would "take the people and put them in cars and drive them to a big boat." There, he would "check their luggage, to make sure they aren't bringing anything - if they have some of their machine stuff that they can make the yucky seeds with, I, I, I'll take the machine parts... and throw them in the ocean!" He would then place them on the boat and sail them away to a "deserted island, that has one banana tree on it." His parting gift to the corporate sharks before they embark on their voyage? 100 seeds. He would give them a hundred seeds to cultivate and live off of.
OMG. I question his ability to truly understand the immense irony of this vision, but it tickled me all morning. The hilarity of providing the very bastards that created the Terminator Seed with 100 seeds that would, in order to ensure the survival of said bastards, actually have to work the way nature intended, is immeasurable to me :) Whether he truly "got" what he was doing or not, the poetic justice of this decision brought a peaceful closure to his little rant, and he ambled over to his swing to sing and hop... (Well, seeming closure. Later this morning, he grabbed a fruit and, shaking it in my face, asked if he should go ahead and start collecting his 100 seeds, or if he should wait until next week to begin...)
Ahhh, our little "social activist" (that has a nicer ring to it, no? :)
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