Alice said, "I like pigs; they make a delicious snack!" Then, a few minutes later she added, "Why do we never go to a market, just grocery stores? I want to see meat hooks."
Background: Our new nighttime routine with Alice is that after we read her three stories, she gets five minutes. She always chooses to watch a video in that time, but it is usually something to supplement a concept mentioned in a book, like watching parasailing or figure skating. But sometimes Alice just comes up with questions, and we have to find videos to answer them. Lately, she's been watching some videos of how things are made, like books, pillows, pickles, etc. One night, she watched some video with Zac and on the screen afterwards a video on how to cut up a pig popped up. Although they were out of time for that night, Alice remembered it, and so when it was my turn the next night, she very specifically and forcefully requested a video on how to cut up a pig. I tried to talk her out of it, but she insisted. I told her it might be sad to see a pig cut up, and that it would be gross, but she was completely undeterred.
So, not wanting to thwart the world's next brilliant surgeon, I dutifully typed, "how to cut up a pig" into the YouTube search bar. The videos were surprisingly plentiful, but I needed something shorter than five minutes, so I finally settled on this one.
Alice watched the whole thing, riveted, not flinching or wincing once.
It's funny, because at the slightest hint of danger or distress in a movie, Alice freaks out. She couldn't even watch two cartoon, talking Dinotrux fight on Netflix. But apparently we have completely failed to instill any empathy towards real animals in her. Keep in mind, she was obsessed with Peppa Pig for the better part of a year, and she was completely unfazed watching this pig get cut up, something I was even having trouble watching. It was so hard for me to watch, that a minute in, I handed the phone over to her and tried to go to a happy place in my mind, while I once again thought about how morally, we probably really shouldn't still be eating meat in this day and age.
