Recently I was invited to read a story of Tyler’s choice to his kindergarten enrichment class. His resounding request: “There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly.” I was reluctant. If you recall, it is a story about a gluttonous old woman who kills herself by ingesting a series of live farm animals. But the more I tried to change my boy’s mind, the more adamant he became.
Story time arrived. All the way through, I dreaded delivering that famous last line. Finally, there came the inevitable.
“There was an old lady who swallowed a horse…”
I paused for a moment and held my breath.
“…She’s dead, of course.”
I quietly closed the book and waited. I had prepared some information about death, the grieving process and the Great Beyond for the questions that were sure to follow. A little blonde with flashing Dora sneakers initiated the Q&A.
“I want to see it,” she demanded.
“I’m sorry?”
“The picture of her body.”
“The picture of…? No, I’m sorry. There’s no picture.”
“Did the horse die in her stomach?” piped in the wild-haired boy across from her.
“I’ll bet her stomach was shaped like a horse,” speculated a sweet little thing with beads dangling from her braids.
“They’ll have to dig a really big hole to bury her,” surmised another munchkin-esque voice, but I didn’t bother to find its source. Instead, I was staring at the teacher, my eyes imploring her for assistance.
She laughed. It was a borderline maniacal laugh with a message: “Welcome to my world.”
When Don Henley said this was the end of the innocence, he didn’t know the half of it.