The Wisdom of a Child

Last night my daughter decided to be a detective. She got out her pen and her paper and looked at my husband and I and said "Ok, what seems to be the problem here?" After we laughed for a minute, we told her there was no problem. So she says "Well I'm going to get to the bottom of this!" At this point we are laughing pretty heavily, as she has such a serious look on her face. The more we laugh the more she began to smirk. Then she says to us "OK, ask me questions." I raise my hand, "OK, here's a question for you. What is it that you are doing?" She doesn't answer my question, but rather begins to write down my question. "Ask another question!" she tells us. So I'm thinking as long as she's answering questions, I might as well ask the big ones! I ask her "If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" She answers "Yes, next question!" I am laughing hysterically. She doesn't even think about the answer, just answers. I can't ask another question at that point so my husband asks her "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?" Without hesitation, she says "The egg! Next question, please." I regain myself enough to then ask her "What is the meaning of life?" What came out of her mouth actually shocked us a bit as we kind of found it fairly insightful for a 5 year old. She said "Recycle!" Of all the words in her vocabulary why she would say recycle is beyond me. But since I am Buddhist, I found it quite insightful. Living and dying and being reborn. Even without Buddhism you have to think, well we die, we become the soil, the soil grows plants, animals eat plants, we eat the animals. In nature there is a lot of recycling. After I regain myself, I ask her "Who created the Earth?" she says "God." Now, apparently she learned this from her cousin because I am Buddhist and my husband is Agnostic so we don't ascribe to God creating the Earth. It's all well and good because I wanted to expose her to all different religions, but it took me aback a little for a 5 year old. I was thinking to myself, now how did it happen between two 5 year olds that a conversation was had about how the Earth was created. I chuckled. Finally, Paul asks her "OK, then what happens when you die?" This was the funniest response yet. She says "Rolly Pollies eat you." Apparently after that, her question and answer session was over, as she handed us each a piece of paper that she had been writing on as our copy of the conversation and went on to do something else. Our daughter the Deist detective.