Or Maybe If a Guy was Walking Along and He Tripped, and He Hit his Head on a Rock and He Wasn't Dead, But You Knew He Was Going to Die, I Could Probably Start Eating Him. But If He Woke Up I'd Stop, cuz I Figure, Hey, That's Normal Human Etiquette and I'm Not Crossing That Line for Anybody

Yesterday I was driving to a friends house with Ash and Alexa in the backseat.

"Mama!" Ash said, thinking of something else to say. "Did you know some people...um, some people eat...people without knives or forks?"

I paused, not quite sure what she was saying. Ash is speaking in the typical five-year-old dialect, where there are long pauses in the middle of sentences and sometimes she starts the sentence over again in the middle of the sentence. Most of the time it's not hard to understand, but in this case the wording made a difference.  Was she talking about cannibals or poor table manners? "Um...what?"

"Did you know some people eat...um, people without knives or forks?"

"Some people eat without knives or forks?"

"Yes! They eat people without knives or forks!"

I paused again, trying to decipher what she was trying to say, at the same time wondering where in the world this was coming from.  "People eat people?"

"Without knives or forks."

"People eat without knives or forks?"

"People eat PEOPLE without knives or forks/"

"Are you saying people eat other people? Humans eating humans?"

"Yes. Did you know that?"

"Uh...."   I would like to remind everyone that my daughter is five years and two weeks old. "Who told you that?"

"Maile told me. She said people eat people without knives or forks."

Ah, the influence of an older cousin. So, in a car, driving to a friend's house, I got to have a conversation with my five year old about cannibalism. And how it's wrong. And we don't eat people. Not with forks and knives, not without forks and knives. It's an important conversation to have with your children?