“Was he a bad man?” my four-year-old daughter Elly asked after witnessing her first heist.
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I don’t think Elly judged his appearance as sharply as I did. Her reference for people in rags comes from the first half of the Cinderella story. Last week, when a friend of ours was over, Elly asked me to tie a kerchief in her hair. She told our guest that she was playing Cinderella, then took a dish towel, got down on all fours, and began humming and wiping the floor. If I told her the beggar was waiting for his fairy godmother to change him into a prince, she’d be delighted. When she asked me why the man was so dirty, I said he probably didn’t have a washing machine. Part of me is very protective of my daughter’s fairy tales. I’d like her to hold on to the idea that rags can conceal a Cinderella (or Cinderfella) within.
While the adults discussed the theft–the man had taken about 20 boxes of roll-on deodorant–Elly began pulling at my sleeve again, asking “What happened, what happened, what happened?” I bought her some bubble gum. I thought maybe the owner would thank me for my effort, but he was too disgusted with the event and seemed to blame me for yelling out. A more quiet approach, he suggested, would have nabbed the bum. I asked him why he hadn’t called the police. A squad car had just pulled up at a restaurant across the street. “Ah,” he said with some spite, “they’re never there when you need ’em.”
“What does ‘stole’ mean?” she asked. This was either a very hard question or a simple one.
“The police will get him, and he’ll be in jail tonight,” I told her. Another fairy tale.
