This morning I was joined in bed first by Lauren, and then by Yohannes. As they chattered back and forth (without breath or thought), I bemoaned the fact that daylight was already here.
Lauren asked, “How did the polar bear get such a short tail?”
Yohannes raised his hand enthusiastically and said, “Oh, I know, I know”.
I mumbled, “The beaver bit it off!”
Both kids simultaneously said, “Maw-om”.
“Can I say?” Yohannes politely asked.
“Yes Yohannes, you can go ahead”, Lauren said, as crisply as any schoolteacher.
“Well, it was the fox,” he started. “He led the polar bear to a hole in the ice and told him to stick his tail into the hole. The polar bear did, and when he woke up in the morning, he got up, but his tail was frozen into the ice and broke off.”
“I still think the beaver bit it off,” I said.
“The beaver doesn’t even live in the Arctic” Lauren informed me.
“We-ell . . . he was going to visit his grandmother and he accidentally got on the wrong bus. Everyone knows that beavers can't read. The next thing he knew, the bus stopped in the Arctic and the driver told everyone to get off. The beaver, who by now had been on the bus a very long time, was very hungry. He wandered off the bus and saw a sleeping polar bear – at the back end of the polar bear, there was a marshmallow sandwich. The beaver went over and bit it off! And that is how the polar bear lost its tail.”
Both kids fell back with laughter.
And then Yohannes asked, “But I’m right aren’t I?”
“Yes Yohannes, you are right,” Lauren knowingly said.
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