Never grow up, not me
The Papaya has a serious thing for Downton Abbey. She scared her friend Maddie in school by getting the shakes from Downton Abbey deprivation. Spot rolls his eyes and calls it melodrama (DA, not the Papaya, although you could say that, too). I agree, but I'll say I'm looking forward to the next episode anyway. So last night I thought I'd introduce her to my other sad addiction, the Pride and Prejudice A&E miniseries of some years back with Colin Firth (oo, dreamy). After about an hour, she threw in the towel. "Is that character good or evil?" she kept asking me. "It's complicated," I always responded. "Think of their faults. Think of their motivations." She didn't like that. "It's too much like the real world," she complained. She's reading a book right now in which the same story is told four times from the POV of each character. No surprise, the mean boy's story turns out to be rather complicated. In school and at home, she's bombarded with pleas to understand the plight of the bully, of the bullied, of the Ethiopian orphan girl who just hopped off the plane and started sixth grade midyear at her school. She gets it. But it's really no wonder that she longs for Harry Potter, for LOTR, for Disney even (and if her voice teacher gives her one more song to learn from the Hunchback of Notre Dame or Beauty and the Beast, I WILL barf all over the piano). Miss Justice longs for a world of clear right and wrong that is disappearing with every day she ages. So we'll have to give Jane Austen a pass for now. Maybe Peter Pan.