The 5 Year Old has been in a thoughtful rather than talkative mood recently, but today she has a new idea playing on her mind.
"What if everyone in the world had to cancel their birthday?" she asks.
"Why would they do that?" I ask.
"Because no-one will come to their party!" Obviously.
"No-one will come to anyone's party? That seems a bit unlikely..."
"But what if everyone in the world gets chicken pox?" she asks, with a big gesture.
"What, at once?" I cry.
"People do all get ill at once sometimes!"
"That would be some epidemic," I shrug. "Chicken pox only lasts about a week, though. Everyone doesn't have a birthday on the same day, though, some parties could go ahead."
"No!" she insists. "This chicken pox will last a year!"
Well, no arguing with that.
"Well, in the unlikely event that a chicken pox epidemic overtook the entire world at the same time, even the people who had already had it, and lasted an entire year, then I imagine that lots of birthday parties would be cancelled, yes."
"That would be sad," she nods glumly.
"On the bright side, it would be great news for all the chiggy-wigs!" I chip in.
"Why's THAT?" she asks.
"Well," I say, in a vaguely post-modern nod to this blog I read called The Philosophy of a 5 Year Old, "chiggy-wigs eat chicken pox, don't they?"
"That is ridiculous," she snorts, having spent a half term studying insects since our prior conversation, "they are called woodlice, and they eat leaves!"
Darn you, education. Gosh darn you all to heck!
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