That Wholesome Story Irony

I wanted to follow up on that last entry tonight. I just finished reading the kids the first chapter of that wholesome Little House in the Big Woods story--initially feeling all warm and fuzzy and virtuous.

I was horrified! It turns out that the first chapter of this pious book is all about hunting, butchering, and preparing meat! We read about preparation of hickory-smoked ham, bear meat, venison, pig-tail-on-a-stick, sausage, headcheese (yum!), and bladder balloons. That poor squealing hog...the huge teeth on the bear trap...those deer hanging from the oak trees (a lovely view Laura gets one morning when she wakes up)!

While it was perhaps an educational experience, the irony was immense! Here I was worried about exposing them to complicated theological thought--feeling guilty about it--and so I remedy that by giving my vegetarian children graphic animal death scenes instead! I imagine that this is perhaps a wee bit more likely to give them bad dreams at night, don't ya think?

Hmm..I'm weighing what I should do here... I think it might have been the universe laughing at my attempt at piety. I did glance ahead to different sections, and they did all look nice and wholesome, but that was just too perfect of an answer to my fine intentions tonight. I am sort of considering returning the books, but maybe I'll keep trying for a couple more nights. I'm not the terribly overly-protective sort with the kids, but part of me is thinking it might be more decent to get the next Dark Reflections book instead!

An interesting related note is that I had a dream this afternoon that I was eating a stew that I believed to be vegetarian, but, after I was mostly done with it, I realized that it had all sorts of different meat in it--chicken, pork, etc. I felt a bit nauseated, of course, after nearly 20 years of being vegetarian. Anyhow, that dream was just after we'd bought the books. I'm wondering if my subconscious remembered that meat-laden aspect of the books, since I did read them when I was a girl but don't consciously recall very much from them.