My Daughter, The Conspiracy Theorist

While a good friend of hers from Girl Scouts is in her class, most of the friends who have been the Lone Star Girl's classmates in previous years are not in her class this year and she is sort of bummed about that. Yesterday, she told me her theory about the different classroom compositions this year: she thinks it is a plot to separate her group of friends who protested the sending of stray dogs to Animal Control last year. She thinks the principal might not even know, but that the assistant principal decided it was trouble to have that group of girls together and split them up among the different fourth grade classrooms. I told her she had lost her mind, and that neither the principal or the assistant principal would do that. She said she wasn't so sure...they had caused trouble, annoyed people. The assistant principal probably wanted to be sure it did not happen again. I told her that her assistant principal was in the running for most cool and tolerant person on Earth and that he adored her and would never do such a thing. She disagrees. Nine years old and she honestly thinks The Man is trying to suppress her activism.

This just supports my own theory that children who take up their parents' values get more radical with each generation. My mother is more radical than her caring and compassionate mother was, I am more radical than my caring and compassionate mother is and the Lone Star Girl? At this rate, we'll be lucky if the FBI's not really looking into what she checks out from the library by the time she's twelve. She often asks me if I will be mad if she gets arrested for protesting...this? That? She seems to think it is a foregone conclusion that arrests are in her future. Oh my.