Praying for Rhinos
The past few days the Demolitions Expert has been battling a virus. Because this virus has brought with it days of high fevers the lovely Mrs. Sharp and I have been running the two-man weave to keep the one-month-old Jedi quarantined from his big sister. Most of the time the way this has been carried out is with my wife barricaded in the master bedroom with the Jedi while I wrangle the Zoologist, Ballerina, and Demo Expert anywhere but the master bedroom. Sunday afternoon Opa came to pick up the older two just so we could get a nap in.
This arrangement has led to a good bit of shenanigans, and at this point I think everyone is getting a little stir crazy, or maybe that is just the adults. At some point today the Demolitions Expert began to wail mournfully. Someone spontaneously crying loudly isn’t unusual at my house, but I did try to at least figure out what was going on. I asked the Ballerina, who was standing beside the Demo Expert and a Minnie Mouse car that the kids ride around the house, what had happened. She very clearly explained the situation, “The car stepped on her foot and it hurt.”
Shortly after the Minnie Mouse car apparently became sentient the Zoologist began asking me how to spell the name of a type of lemur (Indri) that I had never heard of until today. Then he began pestering me to print some pictures of rhinoceroses off of the internet. I did an image search and was letting him pick out one that he wanted. We happened across one of a rhino that had been attacked by poachers who had taken his horns. I spent some time explaining bad guys like poachers, what they do, why they do it, and how people work to stop them. This whole thing was such a revelation to him. He may end up leading some anti-poaching crusade in the future. For now he just said to me very somberly, “We need to pray for the rhinos.”
A few minutes after he and I had our discussion about poaching the Ballerina happened through the living room. One thing you have to know about the Ballerina is that she does not like to not know things, or more accurately she does not like to admit that she doesn’t know something. I find this unusual for someone that likes to ask as many questions, but I just assume this this all part of her learning the ways of the female early in life. The Zoologist earnestly went up to his sister and told her, “We need to pray for the rhinos.” The Ballerina looked at her brother and responded, “I know, Bubba, I know.”
I fully expect rhinos to be very popular in bedtime prayers for quite a while now.