Pre-school Stars, Steve Ditko, and Ladybugs

My four year old is The Clasroom Star this upcoming week. Which means that her class will be decorated by a poster all about our daughter and that all the other snot-nosers will finally worship her, or something I suppose. I was never filled in on all the details, but then I never asked for them. After all, she is a growing young woman and I gotta trust some of her choices.

Some...

One of the spaces she was supposed to fill out in this poster asks what she wants to be when she grows up. Independently, and with no prompting from either parent, she told both my wife and I of her plans to be a piggy when she reaches full maturity.

My wife thinks she talked her down to a the possibility of being a farmer. Which is kinda cool because it goes along nicely with my whole localism/agrarian-based society of the future thing-y. But Joss' dreams were not dashed. She still insisted she'd make a wonderful - if not tasty - piggy.

After it became obvious that her uncle and I were not going to let this one go, she found an alternative suggestion while getting ready for bed.

"Ooh, how 'bout I be a ladybug?"

"Well, you're going to be one for Halloween."

She's well-rounded. She believes in fairy tales AND comic book heroes.

"And as a grown-up?"

"No, sweetie. Only for pretend. You can't turn into one. It's physiologically impossible. You won't *grow-up* to be a tiny little ladybug."

Thinking I could turn this into some kind of awesome parent lesson about the interconnectedness of all of creation or whatever, I continue.

"But you know who made the ladybugs?"

"Jee-- Jeeb--?"

"That's right, 'Jesus'."

"Wow... (Sparks flying) All the ladybugs?"

"Yes, honey. All of them. Do you know who else Jesus made?"

"Spider-Man!"

"Well, Jesus made all the spiders. Though I personally am no big fan of that action."

"But not Spider-Man?" She actually sounds a little bit disappointed here. As if let down by this glaring omission of Jesus'. Was Spidey merely a freak of nature as J. Jonah Jameson has suggested for all these years?

"No, Spider-Man is pretend. He's not real. But Jesus did make the brilliant minds of Steve Ditko and Stan Lee, who invented Spider-Man..."

"Oh."

And that, kids, is how nerds are born.