Anthropological Studies

The older girl got one those android computer tablet things from Santa. So she is burning up the internet becoming a wizz at retreiving information we can't live without. The younger one is registering her Zhu Zhu pet, which she has decided to name Hippie. She asks me if hippie is spelled hippy. Sounds right to me I say. I search through my engineer's brain for the right spelling; sure hippy is right I think.

In no time the older one comes buzzing around the corner. Dad, dad, I looked it up. It's hippie; look. She's showing me the website showing some hippies sitting around at Woodstock or some other such place. Why do they look like that? What's wrong with them? The inquiries continue. I'm not a product of the seventies myself. Don't know much about the period except that the music was really great once in a while. From my understanding, the whole movement was based on the proposition that our parents have screwed everything up so fuck them.

So I'm trying to think of how to react to this rapid fire of questions coming from a kid who normally is kind and accepting but seems alarmed by and reflexively judgemental toward the people she is seeing in these internet photos. Should I tell her that her uncle Scott once thought he was a hippie? Should I show her a picture of a hippie posing with Rudolph and holding a cat? She loves cats.

So it is with an ie. What do you know? Yeah, they do look pretty strange don't they? Are you all ready for bed? Let's get your teeth brushed and get going.