Martin Luther King Jr. Day

My 5-year-old came home from school on Friday fired up about a story he heard. I wish I would have recorded this conversation. I tried to get him to retell it to no avail. He isn’t a puppet.

“Mom, do you know Martha Luthor King?”

Honey, it is Martin Luther King Jr. He was a civil rights activist.

“Yeah, hims. Did you know a long, long time ago there were bathrooms that just white people could use and can you believe that and (my son loves run on sentences) a long, long, time ago there were stores that only white people could go to.”

I nodded eager to hear more. He continued, “and Martha Luthor King wanted brown people and black people and pink people (Pink? The characters who live in the boom box on Yo Gabba Gabba?) to be treated the same. So, Martha Luthor King gave a speech, but a bad guy didn’t like Martha Luthor King.”(no relation to Lex)

“Do you know what the bad guys did? They blew up his house and ruined all their toys. So, the bad guy still wanted to hurt Martha Luthor King so they shot him in the head. And then he died. Isn’t that sad Mom?”

Yes, it is.

“But you know what Mom? Because of Martha Luthor King we can all go to school together and that’s a good thing.”

He may not be good at remembering names, but he got the message and that is a good thing.