Happy 4th of July!

I'm a little late with a 4th of July related story but in my defense, the post worthy part didn't really happen until after the 4th.  We spent the morning of the 4th at an outdoor flea market type event with lunch at Pizza Hut, the afternoon just being lazy, and the hours near firework time at our new house which is very close to where the town's fireworks are launched.  At some point during our time at Pizza Hut, we had a quick discussion of why we celebrate the 4th of July.  Something along the lines of  "American used to have a king who made the rules but now we have a President.  The day when people in American said they wanted a President was the fourth day in July and so now we celebrate that day every year."

Fast forward to Friday...
Out of the blue during lunch, Conleigh says that she wishes we had a king.  I assumed it had to do with wanting there to be prince and princesses and asked her if that is what she meant.  She said that no, she just wished we had a king instead of a president.  In jumps Kenson who wants to know more about how we came to have a president and why we wanted a president rather than a king.

The conversation went a bit like this:

"A king is a king because his dad was a king, not because people picked him to be a king"

"A long time ago, people lived in England which is across the ocean but some people got in a boat and came to America which is very far away from England."

"King George was the person who made the rules and no one in America got to help make the rules."

"Americans wanted to help make the rules but King George wouldn't let them so they signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4th which said they wanted to make their own country instead of being part of England."

"King George didn't like this so he sent soldiers to fight with the Americans and this mean there was a war."

Kenson heard this and immediately connected it to a conversation we'd had about dinosaurs..."since it was a long time ago, were there dinosaurs in the war?"  ("Um, no.  Dinosaurs came before the war.")

Then he wanted to know who won.  He was quite excited to know that America did.

"And once America won, then the people in America could vote to choose a president."

Again Kenson knew something about that.  (This time he was a little more accurate than the dinosaur bit.)  "Oh yeah.  Like people voted for George Washington and Abraham Lincoln to be presidents.  But people shot Abraham Lincoln.  Why did they shoot him?

"Because he changed the rules about slavery."

"Why did people not want him to change the rules?"

"I suppose for a lot of reasons.  Some people really just didn't like black people.  Some people thought they would lose a lot of money if they couldn't use slaves to run their farms. Some people just couldn't think of any other ways to live because they had lived with slaves for so many years, they couldn't see any other way to live."

Then Conleigh pipes up, "Will there be kings in heaven?  Because I don't think I want them to be there.  I think they should go to another heaven, a mean king's heaven."

Because someone getting shot equals death which equals heaven.  Full circle...back to kings.  It may take a twenty minute conversation, but we will get back to kings.