the world a letter

Yesterday I got onto the topic of Dante's Inferno with Jonah; just the beginning, but he liked hearing about the wolf &c so much he asked me to tell him the whole thing. So I did. At first I kept away from the gory stuff, but he liked that the best, so I kept it in. He loved it, the progression, the morality, the heirarchy, the philosophy even--he understood the mechanism of punishment clearly, which astonished me because I remember it taking a long time to sink in just how each instance of punishment related to the sin committed. He asked why god hates some things more than others, and even listened through the whole incontinent/violent &c thing; I made sure to explain to him that we don't believe there's really a hell (let alone that we're Jewish), that these are depictions of how people feel inside from doing these things (I did omit the punishment of those people who did things I don't consider bad, by the way--parental prerogative. I'll save that for the next go-through.). By the time I told him about Ugolino, on his way up to bed even (he really wanted to know what the bottom was like), and I reminded him none of it was real he was exasperated, "I know that!", not scared at all.

Little kids are weird. Have I mentioned that he loves the game "Sonic Heroes" and has drawn around thirty pictures of Sonic the hedgehog and taped them up strategically around the house, to keep out bad dreams? He even drew a mirror on the way up the stairs, so that if they tried to sneak up they would see themselves, get scared, and run away. There's a big blue sonic outside our front door. I should take a picture, actually. It's kind of scary, it bristles and has narrowed eyes.