Back It Up

The other day I saw a wishing well. It was actually a wooden planter made to look like a wishing well, but that doesn’t matter when you have a good imagination, you’re two, or both. Scarlett has been pretty enthralled by “Snow White” lately so I knew she would get excited about it. Now, planters don’t just spring up by themselves, they get placed in yards by people--and the yards are ordinarily theirs. So, if you didn’t put a wishing well with violets or cyclamen somewhere, chances are pretty good you have to trespass to see it. Which is a dilemma, right? I made a point of drawing her attention to this cool thing that belonged to someone else, and now she was interested. Understandable, but not the best “respecting privacy” lesson. It’s entirely likely that anyone with enough whimsy to put a flowering wishing well in their yard wouldn’t mind if a two year-old Snow White fan took a trespassing peek, but maybe not and certainly not everyone would feel that way about the invasion. It’s one of those moments when you realize, belatedly, that you made a bad parent call and then have to back up a bit. We compromised by standing on the public sidewalk and looking at the wishing well. It wasn’t perfect, but it was the best I could do. In Megan E. Bryant’s Snow White, Strawberry Shortcake and her berry best friends replay the classic story. But they do it without breaking any laws.

http://www.amazon.com/Snow-White-Berry-Strawberry-Shortcake/dp/0448444585

http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/91762.Megan_E_Bryant