Friday, July 13, 2012

So Much for the Castanets...

When Carly was a tiny little girl, I had such high hopes that she'd be kind of like me. She was such an enthusiastic little jellybean - seriously, scroll back through our archives and she's really really excited in almost all the photos. I thought that since she is built just like her dad, and at times looks exactly like him in the face, that maybe I could get to claim some pieces of her personality.

Well...nope.

Quick backstory: when Paul was in kindergarten, he used to ask his dad to read Edgar Allen Poe at night. Seriously. When I was five? I fell asleep to mariachi music, no lie. And therein lies the crucial difference between my husband and myself.

** Mental picture: five year old me, in a big sombrero with ball fringe dancing around like a grinning maniac with maracas...and five year old Paul, sitting in a windowsill reading Poe while it's dark and stormy outside. You're welcome. **

So anyway, back to tonight? On our way home from Friday Free Flicks (We saw Hop. It was...well, it was better than Spy Kids, that much I can say.), Carly asks me if there are any stories that don't have happy endings. She sounded totally annoyed and bored that it always seems to work out in the end. I mean, YAWN. I briefly outlined Romeo and Juliet over Katie yelling at us for putting her in the carseat, but Carly wanted more details...details I could not supply at the moment because my head was about to explode from all the screaming. I told her I would get back to her tomorrow.

Then after slogging through bedtime (chest-high quicksand, anyone?), the highlight of which is a tossup between the time they were all crying at once and the time someone - I forget who - told me they were moving out because I didn't give them enough bedrooms in our house...I came downstairs to a note on my bed reminding me quite emphatically to not forget to look up Romeo and Juliet.

I tried to take a picture but it wouldn't load.
And I tried to do a search for tragedies in literature that might be appropriate for a seven year old. Shockingly, that list is very short. Old Yeller?

But look what I found! Summaries of Shakespeare that do not involve lovable family pets or dead bodies under the floorboards. Win.

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