Plan B

For quite awhile, Charlie has been on a distinct career path: he will be a firefighter and save cats from trees so he can take them home to Dixie for her to love. He will marry a Pizza Girl, so that he has  both a wife and all the  pizza he could want.  Once he has done the kitten saving thing for awhile, he will be A President (always A, never The. I keep wondering how many there will be at the same time as him.) and, when he is done with being A President, he will go to work at Burger King, as he might be tired of pizza by then and BK and Wendy's have the best chocolate milk of all the restaurants, but Wendy's doesn't have a playground. He might want to play.

He recently expanded on this plan. See, when he is A President, everyone will like him, because who could not like A President? He looked rather troubled when I told him a lot of people don't like the president, but did not let this slow him down. He added, 'When I am A President, they will put my picture on the $900 bill and then I will get to keep all those because they have my picture on them and I will use them to buy the expensive Lego sets.'

Which was a great plan, until he realized that he is 28 years from being old enough to  run for president and that year might not even be an election year.

So he worked on plan B

He was entering my music class  the other day when he asked me, "Mom, could you make me a pick axe?"

"Sure, Charlie. I'll get right on that. What's it for?" I asked with only a precursory attention.

"I am going to dig a mind in our backyard and get gold and then use that gold to get rich and then buy the really expensive Lego sets," he explains.

"Gold mining. Got it."

Undaunted by the need of the other 44 of us  in the room to begin music class, he begins  providing specs for the project. "The handle needs to be wood and tha other part metal and I need you to make me a second one in case the first one breaks while I'm in da mind," he spells out.

"We can't start a gold mine until after music class," I assert and (wrongly) assume it was dropped. On the way home from school that day, I got more details about his mining venture. 

"One problem, Charlie. There's no gold in our backyard, even if you dig really deeply."

Thinking. "Oh. Someday, can we take a vacation to a place where there is gold and dig a mind and then get rich and buy the 'spensive Lego sets?"

"We will need the landowner's permission, first."

Well, today Charlie was anguished and anxious. "You haven't started my pick axe yet, mom."

"Charlie, honey, remember  how there's no gold in our backyard? And, even if  there was, a mine  isn't a good place for a small human child," I break it to him gently. It is often hard to remember that you are a small human child. 

"I will not use the dynamite or the TNT. I will only use the pick axe. A pick axe cannot explode," he argues.

"Even without explosions, a mineshaft  is not a structurally safe tunnel and it could collapse," I reply. 

Dixie pipes  up, "In the Hunger Games, Katniss' dad dies in a mine collapse."

I add, "Yes, and we would be so sad if our sweet boy died in a mining accident."

Charlie thinks about this. "I guess if I am dead, I cannot play with Legos. I will have to think of another way to get money for tha 'spensive Lego sets. Mom, you can stop working on the pickaxe now."

Logical statement for the day: dead miners need no Legos.