Children Make Politics So Simple

The City Hall in White Salmon after the wind dried the rain

Jill's Journal: Apparently there’s some teeth to the stereotype that it does nothing but rain in Washington. I checked the weather before bed last night and saw a 20% chance of showers. Somehow that turned into an epic rain and wind storm that started long before dawn, lasted until late morning, and woke all of the girls up way earlier than usual.

Our two little ones don’t do well if they miss an hour or two of sleep, so the girls and I canceled our sightseeing plans and hit a playground this afternoon instead. That helped temper the crabbiness to some degree.

The playground we found in this tiny town is right next to the police station and Officer Tony came out to give the girls stickers shaped like police badges. After a brief conversation with Madelyn, he told her she should stay up as late as she wanted tonight. I don’t think I’ve ever leaped up so quickly. I threw Officer Tony to the ground, twisted his arms behind his back, and made him cry “Uncle.” Not really, but I did make him retract his statement. :)

My favorite moment of the day came while Erika was helping me make pizza for dinner. It’s not often we have t.v. service, but we have five stations here (yes, a whole five…this harkens back to the old days!) and Rob was watching President Obama speak from the White House about the debt crisis. Erika thought it was pretty neat to be watching the president talking and she asked me how much longer he would be in office. I said we’d be voting next year for a new president and she said, I kid you not, “If he wants to get reelected, shouldn’t he be worrying about doing a good job now? He should stop spending so much of the country’s money and stop charging people so much in taxes.” Out of the mouths of babes!

But it gets better. She asked what Republicans verses Democrats are and how to tell the difference. Since we had pepperonis in our hands (and she loves pepperonis), I laid 12 out on the counter. I told her to pretend she’d done all her chores, plus extra things like vacuuming and mopping and dishes. She had worked really hard. Her sisters had done nothing but made their beds and then played. To reward her for her hard work, I hypothetically gave her 10 of the 12 pepperonis with her sisters getting one each for the little bit of work they’d done.

Then I told her if she was a Republican, she would think that distribution of pepperonis was fair because she’d worked hard and earned it. If she was a Democrat, she would feel it better to share the wealth by giving each of her sisters three of her pepperonis so they could all have the same amount of four.

I asked her which one she’d rather be.

Her laughing response? “Republican, of course!” while she gave me the “Duh, Mom” look.

But oh dear. Guess what Madelyn is?