Dance of the Animal Cracker Circus: Say What?

Those were the thoughts (among others) that were rapidly running through my mind this evening as my almost 6 year old daughter came up to me right before her nightly shower and said the words "There was a dead body in my class today, my teacher brought it".

SAY WHAT?   (Followed with a mental WTF as I rapidly try to figure out what the HELL she is talking about and what a "dead body" could POSSIBLY be doing in the class room of a preschool).

So the possibilities that ran through my brain in just a few miliseconds.

Petrified animal remains for some creepy show and tell?
Turtle shell, maybe?
Snake skeleton?

These would all be cool things for preschoolers to want to investigate (gross, but cool to a bunch of 3-5 year olds).

I asked my daughter if these were what it was, she informed me that NO it was a PERSON.

Again, rapidly thinking...what could it be!

Surely it's some kind of anatomy skeleton or something about the human body, right?

She said no. It was a friend, a girl. That died.

Rapidly again thinking about any town gossip about a child dying in town (that would have been all over the local news, and I had heard NOTHING) and their are only a few little girls that Kams knows in preschool and I was immediately spazzing that something had happened to one of them.

I didn't want to grill my daughter with a million and one questions at that exact moment so I let it go. While she was drying off and getting her jammies on and brushing her teeth I did a quick internet search for local news of any kids dying recently (thank GOD I didn't find anything)!

I know my daughter is imaginative. I KNOW a lot of scary stuff has happened in the world the past year, and on into this one. The Sandy Hood shootings, the movie theater shooting, the children that died in Oklahoma, all of the crazy things that have happened. I haven't discussed most of it around my kids (they knew about Sandy Hook, and they did know that some kids died in the tornadoes in Oklahoma, but that's all they've known about to MY knowledge but kids are sponges and suck stuff up quick before you know it).

At bedtime I asked her if she was sad about her friend. Kams said yeh she was sad and the grown ups were sad too. I asked if it was someone her teacher knows and she said yes. I asked her what happened. She said the little girl got shot in the heart and died and now everyone was really sad.

My heart skipped a beat.

What the heck are they talking about at the preschool so kids over hear this stuff? I know saying things like getting shot in the heart are NOT things they hear at MY home. My kids are no stranger to the fact that kids die, we follow a huge Childhood Cancer community ever since Keegan was diagnosed back in 2009. The kids know that if Bubby gets big big sick again he could either get better, or die, and that's why he has scans every few months and has to see a doctor. They very much know that death happens, we don't hide it (unless it's on a very large scale) but we don't talk about HOW people die (like they got shot or stabbed or whatever) We don't feel kids need to KNOW that part (though they did know a bad bad man, went into the school and shot some kids but they heard that on the news before we got a chance to stop it and there were so many people talking about it there wasn't much we could do to stop them from finding out how kids died).

Kams has a big imagination, and I'm hoping this is just some weird story she's come up with (something drawn up in the imagination based on all of the crazy things that have gone on in the past year or so in the news and she's becoming more aware of her world and the going ons in it and her mind is trying in some odd way to put it all together in a way that makes some kind of weird sense to her).

However, usually when Kams makes up a story she "writes" it down in her story note book (we have several of those lying around!) I strongly encourage my kids to write and tell stories. Kams generally only tells made up stories when she is writing them down or playing. Tonight she was doing neither she was as serious as could be and this totally came out of no where.

What do you say to that? The only thing I could think of.

"Well honey, just pray for that little girl and her family that will mean a lot to them."

Either today or yesterday Kams came up to me and said her teacher wasn't going to be at school anymore, I just figured her teacher had found another teaching job and wouldn't be returning to that preschool, or Kams was thinking because she was going to Kindergarten her teacher wouldn't be at school anymore, or she wasn't going to be at Kams new school. I don't know, trying to get in that child's mind is like walking in a labyrinth!

So now I'm wondering if it wasn't someone in her teachers family that passed away in another state or something, and the teacher is taking some personal time off or something. Or maybe someone one that passed away awhile back and the teacher keeps a photo of her near by.

Kams is never far from her favorite teacher in the "whole wide wide world". So who knows what she over heard when the adults thought little ears weren't listening. Kams is always listening.

Debating on calling the preschool tomorrow to gently ask what the heck my sometimes overly dramatic 5 year old was talking about, or to just let it go and chalk it up to an over active crazy imagination. She doesn't seem too distressed. I guess at first she thought it was "gross" seeing a picture of someone who was dead. (I don't think it was OF a dead body, but a photo OF the person that died and she somehow took that wrong?) Either way her randomness of coming up to me and saying there was a dead body at her school...was very freaky.

At first I wondered if something bad had happened at her preschool and I had not been informed (their preschool is located inside of an alternative school that sometimes troubled children attend but they are in a different section of the school than the Title 1 Preschool kids). I thought maybe something had happened with one of the students there, but again, after scouring the news I have seen nothing.

I then thought maybe they had some kind of Sandy Hook Elementary memorial up at their school or something, or some kind of memorial to the kids that died in Oklahoma or something. But I was there not too long ago and didn't see any of that, and this is just summer school they are going to now.

Really hoping this is all from the over active imagination, however, that still makes me worry because makes me wonder if she doesn't feel safe at school or something? Discussing death isn't something we do all the time, but they know things die (our cat Tobi recently died and so they know that this happens to both animals and people). We always make sure our children feel as safe as we possibly can, without totally over protecting them and never allowing them to explore life and learn to love life and all of it's many wonders. We just don't share every single graphic detail of events with them. We think they are too young to know a lot of that MOST of it to be honest!

She doesn't seem to be bothered by it, just a passing moment thought that came out while we were talking before she got in the shower.

Earlier today Kams got me with a sudden realization (a funny one).

Yesterday we stopped at a side walk vendor/bazaar type shop sat up along the high way selling knock off crap for cheap, that people always seem to flock to for some weird reason. Kams who LOVES "goin' shopp'n" begged to go over (she saw pink purses).

She talked her Daddy into forking some dough over to her. This girl is a haggler BTW she definitely knows how to shop!

She ended up with a large set of hair ties, and a very cute and "posh" Hello Kitty ring that she was SOOO excited to buy. She put it on and the ring stayed put until this afternoon when she finally took it off.

She gasped in HORROR after she took the ring off and I hear her wail "MOOOOOOOOMMEEEEEEE!!!!!!" Startled that something might SERIOUSLY be wrong with my daughter I dash over to her where she is holding her hand in what seems to be agony. She sniffles and holds up her finger and goes in her angriest/sad/annoyed/confused voice "....MOMMY LOOK WHAT MY RING DID TO MY FINGER!! WHY!"

I about died laughing (on the inside anyway, I couldn't laugh in her face because she was being FAR too darn serious and laughing at her dismay would have just been harsh).

I explained that the ring she had purchased yesterday was a CHEAPLY made ring and it was cheap metal and when it gets wet (like when your hand sweats or you leave on the ring when you take a shower) the metal gets wet. When the metal gets wet it can either turn your finger GREEN where the band was laying or it can turn it rust colored (that's what color hers was, rusty colored)

With a look of shock, and horror and a tiny bit of resentment she growls in a rather intimidating voice "....they sold ME a CHEAP ring?! How COULD they! I will NOT buy cheap stuff again. Cheap is bad." She frowned, glared off into the distance and goes "Mommy, I want to take this ring back and show them what it did to me and yell at them".

I told her that yelling at them wouldn't fix anything. That the ring cannot be returned, and that next time she will know don't buy jewelry from a cheap side walk stand because it will rust your finger. Some things, they just have to learn for themselves. I figured this was a little life lesson she could figure out on her own. She just sighed and put the ring back on her finger. Saying how the ring is still very cute.   I told her we would paint it with some clear nail polish later to help prevent it from rusting her finger. I think she's going to stick with plastic rings for awhile because they don't turn her finger colors.