Wednesday, December 22, 2010

A Sometimes Civil War

The war over what we listen to in the car is a simmering conflict that flares up from time to time and is sometimes civil, and sometimes not.

We've been working our way through a stack of Jim Weiss CDs that I picked up at a storytelling workshop with him.  Greta is particularly taken with Queen Elizabeth and Sir Francis Drake and we listened to it end to end at least four times.  Three of the four of us were tired of it, however, so I had put in Abraham Lincoln the day before to listen to while driving.  I was enjoying it, Clementine was enjoying it, Evelyn was tuning it out and reading her own book, but I thought it was mostly going over Greta's soon-to-be-six head.  When we got in the car for another morning of driving I hit the CD button.

Greta:  Oh, not Abe Lincoln!  I want Queen Elizabeth and the Queen's Pirate.
Me: (exaggerating) You've listened to that 10 times.  Let's finish Abraham Lincoln.
Greta: It is boring.
Me: I don't think it is boring.  Sometimes you have to listen to things more than once to really understand what they are about.  Give it a chance.
Greta:  I do understand it and it's boring.  Son of a farmer grows up to president and has a big war.  So what?
Me: (bursts out laughing)
Greta: (indignant) What?  If you leave out the details, that is basically it.

Well, that cleared up my misunderstanding.  Her campaign against Abe was not founded on ignorance.