Vegans & Dragons: Satan's Game

So I was sitting at the table (standing, really. I tend not to sit unless it I have to and it drives Jen batty) and I was dropping hints about Scott Pilgrim to gin up some interest in seeing it and I said "I'm going to go vegan so I can get super powers" and Lily said "Do vegans really have super powers?"

(Earlier I had asked my friend Karen if she thought being a vegan gave you super powers and she replied "Is iron deficiency a super power?" I wish we'd had this exchange before I wrote that post about how awesome she is, because that would have made this list.)

I said that they did, and Lily said "Vegans and Dragons and Superheroes all have powers." She started ticking off points on her fingers, "A dragon's powers are flying and breathing fire and being nice."

I'm not sure how she got being nice as a power (or even an attribute) of dragons. I figure that she's seen a TV show with friendly dragon or something along those lines.

The other possibility is that we were reading a book a while ago ("Come Rhyme with me") with 26 pages, with one rhyming couplet per letter (the final word being hidden behind a flap of page) and the accompanying illustration providing additional clues. I usually read everything but the last word and let Lily guess it (though I'm sure she has them all memorized by now).

D is for dragon, who is a skillful flyer
be careful when or you tickle him or he'll roast you with his ????

and I asked her if she knew what skillful meant. She answered "Ummm..I think it means 'scary'" and I explained that it meant being good at something.

I didn't think to ask her at the time, but I wonder if she thought that because skillful didn't mean scary as she originally thought, that the dragon was by definition, not scary and in fact, nice. I'm not sure how her mind works, but she proves an endless source of fascination for me.

For example, I lost my temper with her the other morning. It was time to get up, but she said she wanted to sleep a little more. I said that she could sleep for five more minutes, but then she had to get up. She said that she wanted eight minutes, and then talked about compromising, where each person gives up a little of what they so want so that each of them are happy.

So, I come back into the room five minutes later (because little kids can't tell time) and she doesn't want to get up. So I scooped her up out of the bed and was rather more abrupt with her than I usually am. She got very upset.

When we were talking about it later, she said that instead of getting mad, I could just pretend to be mad. I think that's really interesting, because the thing that upsets her is the fact that we're mad at her and not that she might be punished because of what she might have done. I think she's going to turn out to be okay.