Last night, I took Cookie out for a walk about 10pm and it was a moonless night, so it was pretty dark with a sky full of stars.   There were quite a few lightening bugs (fireflys) in one area and Cookie stopped and stared at them and kinda cocked her head and stood there for a few minutes watching the lights come on and off.  I don't think she's seen them before.

it reminds me of a trip Angie and I and the boys took back about 1988 to Iowa for one of the bi-annual family reunions that Angie's family has.  Every two years they have a family reunion in a different part of the country - which is alot of fun.   So - that year, we were in Storm Lake, Iowa and we met at her uncle's farm - completely surrounded by corn fields.  Our boys were 7, 4 and 2 at the time and they had not been around fireflies - so they asked me that evening what all the little lights were.   This was when they still trusted my answers, so I explained that Iowa was known to have alot of very very small visitors from out of space that were unfamiliar with human children, so they had these little bitty cameras with flashbulbs and they were taking pictures every time we saw one light up, so the boys needed to smile at the cameras when they saw them light up.  That night and for 2 nights following - we'd see the boys staring out at the corn fields smiling as they were getting their photo taken.

I really do not believe that I caused any permanent harm to my sons.   They had fun and exciting childhoods and they learned that not everything they hear is the absolute truth and to weigh whether something makes common sense or not and we're very proud of all 3 of our sons.

Don