don't the best conversations with 4 year olds happen on the toilet?

So, I'm sitting on the toilet and Naomi says to me, "When I'm big, I want to dig for human bones and make them into skeletons".

Naomi was born with a taste for the macabre. She doesn't know this, but her favorite filmmaker is Tim Burton, the actor she will watch in anything is Johnny Depp (right now she's grooving on Edward Scissorhands). She was fascinated with the BodyWorlds exhibit when we took her last year. She had quite the love affair with the bookstore's toy skeleton, named, obviously, Mr. Bones.

As my mind raced among sociopathological possibilities I was surely inducing by inflicting such stress as divorce upon her tender psyche, I stalled and asked her a question "Like, for your job?"

"for a job!" Now she's excited. She wants to go get a job RIGHT NOW working with human remains. Great.

Is my daughter going to be a forensic pathologist? Or an archeologist? Or a reclusive bone collector? Time will tell.

But if you ask her what she wants to be when she grows up, she will now answer "I wanna be an arche-cologist! And dig for human bones!"

I've cast my vote.

Comments

[meganann]

That mostly falls under my field, Physical Anthropology, for the most part. The archaeologists all deal with pots and grave goods and shards of rock. The real action is in Physical, where my friends dig up old sanatorium graveyards filled with syphilitic bones, bones with tuburculosis, brains in jars, fetuses in jars. All kinds of gross things. Oh, and we boil dead monkeys like stock to get to the bones. Lots of archeological sites have open house days where kids can come and learn about the digging as well--these will mostly be in the summer. Check with local museums to see, if she is still interested when the time comes (or your local Uni). Send her on over to our geeky little side of the line, we'd love to have her!

[Jenna]

My brother, ages 3-5 wanted to be nothing more than a palientologist. It was the cutest thing.

Of course, at age 2, he wanted to be a fire truck. ;)

[Jo]

My God, could I love her any more?

I used to want to be a physical anthropologist. How COOL.

[Lilian]

Naomi is such a character, it's awesome that she is very original in what she wants to be (unlike Kelvin who just said a couple of hours ago that he wants to do exactly what his daddy does and work at the same place).

How interesting that meganann commented and gave you all this precise information. Now you can teach Naomi to say that she wants to be a physical anthropologist (too lazy to think of a funny way for her to pronounce it right now)!! :)

[Moxie]

You boil dead monkeys like stock to get to the bones?

Wow.