The Spider Story

"... It's so spiders don't get inside..."

It's the story I give my daughter when I cannot explain something in 5-year old terms.  

It is the story I give my daughter when I am tired.

It is the story I give when I want my daughter to avoid danger. 

It is the story I give my daughter when I am quietly praying there won't be a follow-up question.

But there always is. 

Today it was the absorbency pack inside the jar of multivitamins.

On another day or time perhaps I would have been able to explain the molecular reasoning behind why these little packs wind up in everything from multivitamins to sneakers.

Perhaps I would have been able to anticipate the follow-up questions and calmly and patiently explain every detail. The amazing version of myself would even include a T-Chart or Pie Chart or a compare and contrast analysis. 

I would have been able to break-down, exactly, why you are never to eat those pesky packs or leave them lying around for when baby sister crawls and invariably finds everything marked "PELIGRO".

But today I was wiped out by 1 pm and I couldn't muster a more thorough and honest answer than "it's so spiders don't get inside..."

Admittedly, there are other excuses, reasons, half-truths and erroneous explanations I give my daughter on occasion. 

Tall tales like the frequently used "it's closed right now..."

(I wonder at what point my daughter will realize that parks don't close)

When will she catch on that when I say something is broken it's not necessarily so? 

Because trying to explain everything lends itself to more questions and,  more often, intense negotiations.  

I have dubbed her "Priceline" because she is such a negotiator.

I am not sure how awful a parent it makes me to be so tired at times I will say just about anything to make the inquisitions halt... The rapid-fire lines of questioning from a curious little girl that make my mind spin... The calling me out on my errors when I explain something that doesn't quite make sense. 

Perhaps someday when she is a mom herself she will also need to rely on fictitious tales of parks closing early, everyone at the arcade finally going home to go to bed, and "lost" Happy Meal toys.

Perhaps.