Overthinking Nursery Rhymes

My son Evan is a thinker (I don’t know where he gets it from. Probably from his mother 😆). Last night, he read me the nursery rhyme, “The House That Jack Built.” Afterward, he said, “Well, what did you think?” I said, “I have questions: How could the dog worry the cat after being tossed by a cow with a crumpled horn?” Evan agreed and wondered how Jack’s house was so quickly infested by rats. To which I replied, “Well, we don’t know how long ago Jack built the house. It coulda been there awhile.” Evan conceded the point. We both wondered why the maid was forlorn after having been married to the tattered and torn man by the shaven and shorn priest.

Then we moved on to Humpty Dumpty. “Why is he always pictured as an egg? It doesn’t say he’s an egg,” mused Evan. “I don’t know,” I returned. “And what caused his ‘great fall’?” Evan shook his head. “Maybe there was a second shooter!” I exclaimed. “A second shooter? What?” Evan made a face. I explained conspiracy theories surrounding JFK’s assassination, suggested an archer on a grassy knoll toppled Humpty, then said, “Well, now you can go to bed and overthink nursery rhymes on your own!” That was a mistake, LOL.

Later, Evan was downstairs explaining castle wall structures, and how Humpty Dumpty wouldn’t have been so precariously balanced on a castle wall unless he was with someone he knew, someone he trusted. Plus, there would’ve been guards present, so others had to be in on the murder, not to mention people don’t break in pieces when they fall so there had to be someone at the bottom of the wall waiting to dismember Humpty, and—it was at this point I cut Evan off with a finger pointing to his bedroom 😀 As he went, he said, “Now I’m moving on to ‘Rock-a-bye Baby!” (Sigh).