They Ate Bambi’s Mom

And now I’m wishing a big hole would open up and swallow Laylee’s. 

Me and my big mouth.

She did this to me, you know?  With the questioning.  Why? Why? Why?

I broke down.  I did and there’s really no use placing blame.

Whenever we get to the part of Bambi where the shots are fired from the grassy knoll and the absentee father is forced to be a man and live up to his responsibilities, I say, “Oh, wow!  This is the part when Bambi gets to hang out with his dad!”Â  That is all. 

Sometimes Laylee asks what happened to his mom and I resist going into a lengthy description of the process of making venison jerky by fire-happy hunters who now sleep on a mamma-Bambi-skin rug.  I just tell her roughly what Bambi’s dad tells her, “She had to go away.  Maybe she’s running errands.”

So this last time as we’re watching, we get to that part and I’m busy on the computer, probably enthralled by one of your dad-gum blogs when:

Laylee:  Is this the part where Bambi’s dad tells him what happened to his mother?
Me:  No.
Laylee:  Why?
Me:  Bambi’s dad will never do that.
Laylee:  Why?
Me:  Because he doesn’t want to tell him that someone ate his mom.
Laylee [stunned-end-of-the-innocence deer-in-the-headlights silence]
Me [shoving my foot deeper in my mouth]:  Well, the hunters were just hungry.  That’s why they shot her.
Laylee:  [no response]
Me:  We all eat animals.  You know when we eat chicken or fish or meat.  We’re eating little chickens or fishies or cows because we’re hungry.  It’s okay.  We just need to eat meat and so sometimes we do and the hunters were just hungry too and so they needed to eat something.
Laylee: [Can her eyes get any bigger and her mouth any smaller? Answer=no]
Me:  They just like deer meat and how it tastes so they had to eat something so they just ate Bambi’s mom.  It’s okay.  It’s not that big a deal.  We do the same thing all the time.

Once I got started, I just. Could. Not. Stop.  If she doesn’t end up a therapy-junkie vegan, chained to the front doors of a gun store one day, I’ll count my blessings.