Bugs

Look, I’m not so disillusioned that I think I can completely cut off how much influence can be inflicted on LatteGirl by the outside world.  In some instances this may not even be a bad thing, as it will expand her world view outside of my own realm of knowledge and/or beliefs.  Who knows what she may discover… knowledge, understandings of culture, better ways of doing certain tasks, and who knows… there could even be a person out there that can actually come up with a reason not to make fun of Scientologists (OK, I was reaching with that last one).

But (c’mon you had to have seen that coming from a mile away), isn’t there something that I can do to help her filter information?  Some way to get her to understand that sometimes… I’ll settle for sometimes here… that I do have some clue as to what I am talking about.  Oh, sure I know that by the time she is a teenager, I will be considered a closed minded, unable to understand the “modern world” idiot.  At least until she has a family of her own, and starts to discover that I am not as clueless as she thought.  That is the part of the circle of life that every parent understands… eventually.  That life is going to take the same pattern it did before, and that regardless of how hip and cool a parent you think you are, your child is going to show the same disdain for you through their teenage years as you did to your parents.  (Karmic payback I presume).  But that is supposed to be THEN, and NOT now.

Our latest foray into this world of diminishing parental knowledge deals with bugs.  When she was little, LatteGirl loved to look at bugs, collect bugs, and was rarely phased by a bee unless it was swirling around her.  Now however, the mere sight of a bug, or a bee being in the same acre of land as her, has her scurrying for the safety of indoors.

All attempts to allay her fears however are now met with contradictory “facts” as she has learned them from her friends.  “No Daddy, all spiders bite!  And then can kill you.  Because so-and-so’s big sister had a friend who went to school with the cousin of a girl that had to go to the hospital from a bite from a tiny spider.”  (And here I wonder why so many people forward the most ridiculous e-mail chain letters.  Now I see where this trend begins).

Now, she is a “princess” and I am not really all that startled that she would find some bugs “icky” and in the grand scheme of things, this really is probably not the worst issue I am going to face (or if it is, then I am probably the luckiest parent in the world (but I am just waiting for that whole Karma thing to kick in), but today it is bugs… who knows what other “facts” she will get soon.