When you have a kid gallivanting out in the world, they are continually exposed to new ideas and concepts. Sometimes The Munch comes home talking about things I have no context to understand and wonder how it was exposed to her ever expanding sponge-like mind in the first place. Unless you are a homeschooling who choreographs your kid’s education, your child is going learning from a lot of different sources. And there are times when they get introduced to something you don’t fully agree with.

As I was putting The Munch to bed the other night, I asked her what kind of story she wanted to hear. Every night I make up a story for her, usually on a topic she has chosen. It is kind of like my improv practice for the day.

Munch: Mamma, tell me a story about the monster going to jail!

Toni: Jail? Where did you hear about jail!?

Munch: I don’t know.  But in the story the monster goes to jail because he is BAD!

Toni: Hmmmmm but not everybody who goes to jail is bad, Munch.

Munch: Mamma tell me the story!!!

Okay… so I wanted to honor her request about the plot of the story, but of course I had to work in the prison industrial complex and the absurdity of the Rockefeller Drug Laws.  Yeah, of course ax murders and rapist should go to prison, but so should corporate criminals and politicians whose careers are supported by big business bribes and profit from prisons being privatized. I think it is dangerous to blindly trust our infinitely flawed, racist, and classist criminal justice system. But how do I explain all this to a three year old whose current paradigm has “bad people” going to jail.

Toni: Okay.  Once upon a time there was a monster.  He was a kind monster, but he had purple fur and lived amongst monsters who had yellow fur.  The monster village had many rules, some of them reasonable, some of them not. One of the village’s rules was no running.  The yellow furred monsters did not want anyone to run, skip, or having any fun.

But the purple furred monster loved to run. Running wasn’t hurting anybody. So he’d go out to a special field and run around in circles until he laughed and was too tired to run anymore.  One day, a yellow furred monsters saw him running in the field. They already didn’t trust the purple furred monster because he was purple, and now he was breaking the law of no running! So the yellow furred monster put him in jail!

The purple furred monster didn’t like being in jail, but there was still a little space for him to run around.  So he did.  He figured he was already in jail, so why not still run because it made him happy!  But the yellow furred monsters didn’t want him running in the jail, so they put him in a smaller cell that was so tiny the purple furred monster couldn’t even stand up.

Even though he couldn’t actually run, the purple fur monster closed his eyes and imagined running.  This made him laugh and smile.  But this made the yellow furred monsters angry and they told the purple furred monster he wasn’t allowed to think about running anymore.  Do you know that the purple monster said?

Munch: What?

Toni: He said ‘You may take away my freedom to run, but you can never take away my capacity to think, imagine, and dream about running.’

Munch: Ohhhhh

Toni: And then a little yellow furred monster named Adelia said, “Hey. This sounds really unfair.  I think we should revaluate our laws.”  The end!

The next day The Munch drew this. I’m pretty sure she got the message.