How to Kill a Mockingbird

This is what happens when you get a bunch of award-winning popcorn-selling Cub Scouts together for a Caveman Dinner at the park. They use no utensils, spaghetti & meatballs are served along with jello, pudding, and whipped cream, and an all-out food fight quickly ensues. It's pure, unadulterated mayhem. 

That's Ian with his pal Sawyer, by the way. And normally I don't share other kids' full names in cyberspace, but I simply have to tell you that Sawyer has a baby sister named ... Scout Evangeline Stone. How cool is that?! Scout Stone. I can see her name in lights one day.

It tickles me when Sawyer explains her name as, "You know, like in How to Kill a Mockingbird." There's something about that "how" that just cracks me up. Like it's an instruction manual (Step One: Load Pellet Gun, etc.) rather than a Great American Novel.

When we discussed this at dinner last night, I explained to the children that To Kill a Mockingbird is a book about a black man being unjustly accused of a crime, and that they would read it some day. The Professor noted that he read it when he was twelve.

At which point Martha StewartCaroline's face lit up with an idea. "Hey!" she told her Daddy, "For your next birthday, the theme could be To Kill a Mockingbird!"

I think Harper Lee just rolled over in her grave. Birthday Express, start your engines.