I have a 6 year old daughter. She's amazing. She's always been amazing. A true blessing.
We home school her, and so far things are going very well. She can read and write and do basic math, and she's become quite an adept with the computer. She navigates those Tubes with skill. Lately, she's been spending time on Youtube learning about various topics of interest, though more often than not these involved horses or dolphins.
Recently though, she apparently wanted to learn about something completely different.
War.
I walked into the den, and she was watching this:
This led to a short conversation about war. I told her that when this happened I had stayed up all night watching and that I had cried because all I could think about were other little girls like her and how scared they must have been in their beds that night.
"Like when I get scared of thunder storms?"
"Yeah, like that."
She started asking me questions about why people went to war, and what does President Bush mean? (I guess she had been watching a couple of other videos).
Then out of the blue she asks me; "Does Obama like wars?" I told her no, he does not. "Does McCain like wars?" "He doesn't hate wars as much as Obama does."
The conversation turned to presidents and elections and what that all meant. It reminded me of advice I received in the comments to a previous diary I had published here. Some people said I should watch the election results with my kids. I thought it was a great idea.
We looked at a few Youtube ads from Obama and McCain, and we also watched this:
(I never get tired of that one.)
My daughter asked me whether we wanted to vote for Obama or McCain. I asked her who she wanted us to vote for and she said: "Obama. He is much smarter and he is very handsome."
I told her we didn't vote for people just because of how they looked. She gave me a serious nod and said that we should vote for Obama because McCain was stupid and wanted to drop bombs on people. (Kinda hard to argue with that logic.)
And that was that. Since then, I've overheard her and my 4-year old son playing pretend games where they hold elections and are each campaigning. They fight over who gets to be Obama. (At this point I would like to make sure everyone understands that we are not activists. We don't volunteer for any campaigns, have no yard signs, bumper stickers or buttons. We don't even talk about the election very much. So I'm not sure where this is all coming from.)
And just yesterday, my wife taps me on the shoulder and urges me to go see what my daughter is doing. I see this:
I asked her what this was, and she said it was a picture of her with Obama, with people cheering and taking pictures. In her hand is a letter for Obama. What's in the envelope? Well, this very picture, apparently. She wants me to mail it to Barack.
Does anyone know an address I can send it to?
My daughter is a maniac. An Obamaniac.