Yellow Dragons

She was standing in the early morning sun telling me of the terrifying, traumatic experience she had the evening before while I was working late. She was her most animated and I could see that more than twelve hours after the event she was still shaken by it.

I imagine it’s an event she will one day share with a therapist.

“We were at the playground on the slide and we got attacked by a Yellow Dragon!,” my five year old little girl told me. She did her best to describe this monster that had entered her kingdom. It was sort of like a fly, but it was black with yellow stripes. It had bigger wings than a fly and flew faster, she said, and it also seemed very angry.

“It attacked me and it hurt really bad!”

Later I mentioned that they might go back to the playground and judging by the look on her face, I may as well have asked her to crawl into a box full of rattlesnakes.

Of course, her mother had already told me about her having been stung by a yellow jacket, but somehow letting her tell the tale made my morning.

Maybe it was the wild eyes or the stammering to find the words to describe what had transpired; maybe it was the realization that up until this point, she has been protected from things as simple but scary as being stung by a yellow jacket.

In their little worlds, I saw, it’s a mostly happy, safe place. It’s a place of butterflies, princesses, and making silly noises at each other in the car. It’s a place where the election cycle isn’t on their radar and where which country is gearing up for war is as far from their mind as learning how to fly an airplane to a horse’s mind.

I know the world will get scarier, and bigger, meaner Yellow Dragons will come their way, but for now I wish I could just hold on to the little girl who’s biggest dragon is an insect at the playground.

Lord knows there are other five year olds having to slay bigger dragons than that.