the blurry line between mythology and reality

Amy was reading to Micah the chapter on Hera from D'Aulaires Book of Greek Myths, and when she read about how Hera's manservant, Argus, had slain the monstrous Echidna, Micah tried to correct her pronunciation. Mama tried to set her straight, but Micah was very adamant that it was supposed to be pronounced the way he had heard it. Finally, Mama had to pull out her trump card-- the fact that she is the only one of us that has ever been to Greece. Micah, ever the skeptic, asked whether she had actually seen the Echidna, to which she replied that no, she had not, and reminded him that in fact that these are just stories and that Echidna never really existed.

Micah then said, no, it's real-- it just happened a long, long time ago, before there were people. Then he spontaneously explained the timeline of the cultures and mythologies to which he's been exposed. First came "Greece", then "Passover" (i.e. biblical stories), then "Norse", then dinosaurs, and only then came people. Wow-- except for the dinosaurs, he pretty much nailed the chronology.


Now, Amy is showing him pictures of her trip to Greece and how she actually saw Pan's cave. Of course he asked whether she actually saw Pan, so we had to explain how the stories were made up by people who live a long, long time ago about things that happened a long, long time ago, and how the creatures were pretend and not real, but they told the stories about real places.