more hugs, less guns

every day on the way to school, the bean and i have a good 10-15 minutes together.  some days she'll crack open the book she's reading, on other days we'll sing along to whatever's playing on the radio, sometimes we'll just chat about what's going on that day and whatnot, or if she has a test coming up we'll go over the material one last time.

we listen to ryan seacrest's radio show every morning.  i mean, you know how much i love me some seacrest, right?  anyway, we happened to tune in yesterday when they started discussing that day's news headlines.  the topic of the wall came up, and when they moved on to the next thing she expressed her dismay over what she understood the purpose of that wall to be.  she's asked me before if that meant that her friends were going to have to go to another school and told me that she was worried about them.  sigh.

she'd aced a pretty big social studies test last week where they'd learned about some basics - the concept of government, the declaration of independence, the constitution, you get the gist.  and so we started discussing things like freedom of speech, citizenship, immigration, freedom of the press...and then i asked her if she knew what the right to bear arms was.

"that's about hugs, right mom?" she said.

oh, my sweet girl.  i told her that i much preferred her interpretation, and then explained what it really was about.

is there a bubble i can get to keep her in for a while?  i just want her to stay this innocent and optimistic for as long as possible.