The Education of a Three-Year-Old

Joining countless young women before her--including one particular young woman who's been very much in the news lately--my three-year-old daughter has become intrigued with Tom Cruise. This all started because she was sitting on my lap when I was checking my AOL email account, and when a picture of him (related to all the current brouhaha about Katie, etc.) popped up, she said, "Daddy, who's that?" So I told her, and she kept asking me so many questions about him that finally I Googled his image and we looked at several of them. (Though none of the steamy stuff with Nicole from Eyes Wide Shut, of course.)

Anyway, she just kept on talking about Tom Cruise, and later on when she was sitting on the potty, she happened to look down and see a copy of Entertainment Weekly with his picture on it. With a very serious expression on her face, she asked me, "What color is Tom Cruise's dirt, Daddy?" To which I said, of course, "Tom Cruise's dirt is the same color as everyone else's, sweetheart." Let's just hope that she retains that lesson, one of the most valuable that life has to offer, as she grows up and begins to encounter the images, illusions, and falsehoods that surround us all in this world.