Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Sarah says...

I've had a couple of blog-worthy conversations that I haven't been able to get posted yet. One is from several weeks ago; the other is more recent. I'll start with the older one first.

One of our neighbors lives alone in a large house on quite a large spread of property. His wife passed away a few years ago, so it's just him and his vehicles and his cows. Sarah has no concept of a grown man not having a wife, and one day when we were talking, she asked where Mrs. L was. I told her that Mrs. L had died. "Mr. L misses his wife," Sarah said mournfully. She paused, then added brightly, "He still has his cows though!"

Last Friday evening, we visited my parents. My dad sometimes enjoys watching those animal documentary shows, and one about elk was playing on the TV. Two male elk were duking it out, antlers clashing, etc. Sarah asked why they were doing that. Dad responded that they both wanted to be king, but only one of them could be, so they were fighting for it.

Finally, one elk triumphed and the other ran off in defeat. "That one's king!" Sarah exclaimed, then asked if the other got to be queen. "Um, no, it doesn't work like that," Dad answered. He never got any further than that though, because on the screen King Elk was immediately exercising the rights of royalty by, um, mounting a female elk. It happened so fast that there was no time to look away, change the channel, distract Sarah, or anything. Sarah's eyes grew wide. Her reaction? "He scared his wife!"