{"id":74,"date":"2009-11-09T17:34:00","date_gmt":"2009-11-09T17:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jennyandadam.com\/Jenny\/2009\/11\/why-i-wish-johnny-cant-read.html"},"modified":"2009-11-09T17:34:00","modified_gmt":"2009-11-09T17:34:00","slug":"why-i-wish-johnny-cant-read","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jennyandadam.com\/Jenny\/2009\/11\/why-i-wish-johnny-cant-read.html","title":{"rendered":"Why (I Wish) Johnny Can’t Read"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>We subscribe to The Week<\/i><\/a> magazine, and this week’s came today, with a picture of Obama and Karzai on the cover, emblazoned with the headline “Shotgun wedding.”<\/p>\n

With nary a stumble, the boy took a look at it. “What’s a shotgun wedding?”<\/p>\n

I started up with a brilliant move. “Um…. Um…. Um…. What?”<\/p>\n

Doodles: “What’s a shotgun wedding?”<\/p>\n

Me: “Um. It’s… Well… Um…”<\/p>\n

Doodles: “Yes?”<\/p>\n

Me: “You know how today all sorts of people have babies? Women by themselves, two women, two men?”<\/p>\n

Doodles: “Yeah.”<\/p>\n

Me: “Well, it was different in the old days. In the old days, there was this idea that if a woman got pregnant without being married, that it was a bad thing. So if a woman got pregnant and she wasn’t married, the idea goes, the woman’s dad would make the man who got the woman pregnant marry her. It was like he took a shotgun and pointed it to the guy and said, ‘Marry my daughter or I’ll shoot you.’ That’s a shotgun wedding.”<\/p>\n

Doodles: “Well, what if there wasn’t a guy? What if she had just gone to the sperm bank?”<\/p>\n

Me: “Um, that’s a good point.”<\/p>\n

Doodles: “And I don’t understand what that has to do with Obama! Why is Obama going to have a shotgun wedding to that guy?”<\/p>\n

Me: “Well, it means that he’s being forced into a relationship he may not want with that guy, Karzai, the president of Afghanistan.”<\/p>\n

Doodles, thinks a moment. “So why<\/i> is Obama having a wedding?”<\/p>\n

To which I give the age-old response: “Who wants dinner?” And I hid the magazine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We subscribe to The Week magazine, and this week’s came today, with a picture of Obama and Karzai on the cover, emblazoned with the headline “Shotgun wedding.” With nary a stumble, the boy took a look at it. “What’s a shotgun wedding?” I started up with a brilliant move. “Um…. Um…. Um…. What?” Doodles: “What’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3,25],"class_list":["post-74","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-doodles","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jennyandadam.com\/Jenny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jennyandadam.com\/Jenny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jennyandadam.com\/Jenny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jennyandadam.com\/Jenny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jennyandadam.com\/Jenny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jennyandadam.com\/Jenny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jennyandadam.com\/Jenny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jennyandadam.com\/Jenny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jennyandadam.com\/Jenny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}