A Kindergartener's take on skeletons, ghosts and getting dead

Maybe it was because of Halloween.  Maybe it's because I let the kids watch too many episodes of Scooby Doo.  Whatever it was, something has gotten SweetPea to think about dead things.  I'm sure I've mentioned more than once that I've been dancing around the subject, which is really hard, especially since there's no way to talk about my Dad without talking about the fact that he's gone.  I don't know why, but I feel like at four and a half, there are better things for her to be worrying about than dying.  And then I learned, whether or not we're talking about it, she's still thinking about it...but not in the way I imagined...

SweetPea: "Mommy, I'm getting bigger, you know"

Me: "You are getting so big!"

SweetPea: "I'm going to keep getting bigger until I'm as big as you.  Then I'll get bigger until I'm old.  Then I'll get dead and then I can be a skeleton."

Me: "You want to be a skeleton?"

SweetPea: "YES and you can get old and get dead and you can be a ghost."

OK, well I'm glad we cleared that up...and that she has a master plan for both of us.  She was very matter of fact, if not, a little excited about the prospect of being a skeleton.

But it gets better.  Yesterday, on the way home from school, the kids were (suprise, surprise) watching "What's New Scooby Doo" on the portable DVD player and we had this fun conversation...

SweetPea: "Why do they lock those bad guys up?"

Me: "Because they were naughty and fibbed about being monsters to scare people away.  They're locked up so they can't get away."

SweetPea: "Will they bring them to jail?"

Me: "Yes, sweetie, that's where they bring people who do bad things."

SweetPea: "Then they will lock them up in jail and they will have to stay there until they get dead, right?"

Me: "Sweetie, no, not everyone stays in jail until they die."

SweetPea (concerned): "But I'm good, right?"

Me: "Yes, sweetie, you're very good.  No one will put you in jail."

Who knows where that one came from.  I can only guess I have one of her classmates to thank for planting that idea.  For the most part, she doesn't seem overly afraid of the idea of things "getting dead", which I guess is a good thing.  Of course, I'd rather that she wasn't thinking about it at all, but hey, what are you going to do?  At least she hasn't started asking me sex related questions!

Now that Halloween is over, maybe she'll stop thinking about ghosts, skeletons and getting dead.  Then again, the other day we were talking about Thanksgiving and she said to me "Mommy, the turkey we eat at Thanksgiving isn't really a turkey animal, right?"  Oh boy...