Conversation with a granddaughter.....

 

 

Not long ago I was driving to the Dairy Queen with one of my seven beautiful grand kids, Megan, in the back seat.   At the ripe old age of nearly nine, she’s very interesting to talk to.  Somehow the subject came around to super-powers.   If you could have just one, what would it be?

Megan decided invincibility would be her choice.   Someone with that power could never be harmed physically…good choice.  (We didn’t go down the path of kryptonite)

My choice was a toss-up between invisibility and the ability to read minds.  She agreed that both of those would be awesome powers to have.  I asked how she would deal with the moral issues those powers would create for most of us puny mortals?

“What’s a moral issue, Grandma?” Meg queried.

“Well, with great power comes great temptation.  If you were invisible, you could walk into a jewelry store, pop a big diamond ring into your mouth and walk out with it.  No one would ever know it was you,” I explained.

Meg pointed out that people would see your clothes even if you were invisible, and then collapsed in an attack of giggles as we decided you’d have to be naked to make that scenario work!

“How would reading minds give you a moral issue?” she asked.

“If you could read minds you could always win at poker, you could be a star on Jeopardy…things like that,” I said.

“That’s cheating, though,” she countered.

“I agree.  But if you could do it you’d be tempted.   It might be hard to remember that, just because you CAN do something, it may still not be the right thing to do,” I told her.

“I think they should only give super-powers to good people,” Meg decided.

I couldn’t agree with her more.  Now if we only had a litmus test for ‘goodness’, we could make certain only the best of the best had real power in their hands.

That kind of test might prevent us from electing men who send pictures of their privates to women they don’t even know…it might stop politicians from taking bribes and keeping their ill-gotten gains in their freezer…heck, it might even mean that interns serving in the halls of our government were safe from all forms of lechery.  What a concept.

It’s so easy to talk to an almost nine year old; easy to exchange ideas and think through your beliefs.  Maybe Megan should talk to Congress.

                                               Life is Good