Sunday, December 24, 2017

Santa Claus, Indians, and number lines

Brown and Joseay both have been learning about Native Americans recently.  It is hard to teach history to young kids in a way that they can fully grasp (adults too for that matter).  Talking of hunting, living in wigwams, and other daily realities of life centuries ago is difficult to wrap your head around.  Which led my son to ask the all important question recently:  “Did Santa Claus go to the Indians in their tepees?”   I have tried to resist flat out lying about Santa Claus in the past few years, so I deferred and said “I don’t know, what do you think?”  After a few thoughtful moments, he definitively said “well, I don’t believe in Indians” and the matter was settled.


His next bit of insight was discussing the afterlife.  A character in a story (Underneath) had died, and the narrative was still following her experiences, after death.  Brown then took the chance to inform me, “well I am going to live forever.  Is that more than a thousand years?”  “Yes” I said.  “Well, I am going to live longer than that, I am going to live right off the number line.”