Save the Planet - If You Can

My 10-year-old daughter is a liberal. I already know it. In fact, I've known it for a long time.

Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course. I'm just saying. And her tendencies began to show in February of 2009, shortly after President Obama was inaugurated.

She had spent part of a Wyoming winter day looking out her classroom window at the blowing snow, and she began to wonder what the homeless do at times like that. And she began to worry that they have no place to go, no place to get warm.

So she sat down at her desk and hand wrote a letter to the President, urging him to make sure that there are enough shelters for the homeless.

I dropped the letter in the mail myself. Despite what must be a rare letter from an elementary schooler in Wyoming, we have yet to receive a response. Doesn't matter. I'm very proud of her for writing it in the first place.

At home, she's become known as The Rulebook. If you leave a light on, she explains to you the energy you could save if only you'd turn it off. Same with letting the water run while you brush your teeth. Can't get away with it if The Rulebook is around.

Saving the planet, and all its inhabitants, got a bit tougher when her three brothers arrived. We often joked that at nearly 30 diapers a day for the first several months, we'd developed our own plan to single-handedly destroy the planet.

She didn't think it was such a good joke.

I was reminded of her concern for the planet and all creatures great and small recently as she was playing with her brothers on the driveway. See, she's the kid who catches spiders in the house and releases them out on the deck, rather than instantly crushing them, as I would.

She was helping her brothers ride their tricycles and drive their mini-Mini Coopers down our long driveway when Luke jumped out of the car near the newspaper box. In this year of a grasshopper rampage, there were were literally thousands of bugs for the boys to catch, and squeeze, and stick in their mom's face for review.

Luke immediately began stomping on grasshoppers with both feet. It sort of looked like the old high school football happy feet drill: pick 'em up and put 'em down as quickly as you can, but this time with a grasshopper under each foot.

Allison calmly grabbed Luke by the arm and escorted him back into the car. I turned off the lawn mower in time to hear her tell him that there was no need to kill the grasshoppers. After all, she said, they hadn't hurt anyone.

My wife and I think Allison will be a veterinarian. Doesn't matter what she decides to do professionally.

She'll be a good, kind-hearted young lady. Just as we always knew she would be.

We love you, sweetheart.