By Shelley Grieshop
sgrieshop@dailystandard.com Most 5-year-olds can tell you without hesitation that SpongeBob SquarePants flips crabby patties for a living, but are clueless about the duties of our president.
So in observance of Presidents Day today, The Daily Standard tapped into the imaginations of a few little guys and girls from Grace Land Preschool in Celina and asked them: "Just what do you think George W. Bush does?"
"If somebody is bad, he takes them to jail," says Dylan Vann, who also thinks the former Texan drives a bus in his spare time.
"I heard on TV that he's going on vacation to work at the monster truck place. He's going to crash cars like those dummies," adds the bright-eyed 5-year-old.
Not long ago, about a hundred years he thinks, Vann saw the president at a store in Celina where the cop/bus driver/crash car dummy was buying a Barbie for his daughter. He wasn't sure which daughter, adding in surprise, "he has more than one?" Several students were confused about the name of the big house on Pennsylvania Avenue where the president and his family reside.
"He works at the White Tower and takes care of it all day," says Josh Hoenie, 4.
Hoenie's father fixes backhoes so he figures the president does that, too. He's also pretty sure the leader of our country has a blue suit and a striped tie.
Lexi Noll has never gotten a glimpse of President Bush but knows he works and lives at the "Light House," keeping busy doing paperwork. But once in a while he gets a break.
"Then he gets to go out on the boat," she adds matter-of-factly.
Five-year-old Kolyn Wiehe has seen the 43rd president signing papers on television, and his Uncle Mike even lives in Washington, D.C., he says.
"I think they know him pretty good," Wiehe adds.
Providing everybody with "a lot of food and water" is the president's primary job, Wiehe believes.
Fixing "red machines" and driving tractors is what 4-year-old Marie Zehringer thinks the president does.
"He's not supposed to be mean," she says. Holding parties and eating cake is "one of his really, really important jobs," she adds smiling.
Zach Poor says he sees President Bush's face just about every day in the newspaper and is nearly certain the guy is a mailman.
"I'm pretty sure he goes through the mail at the mail station," Poor adds.
Five-year-old Karley McNerney says President George Washington (well, she got the first part right) is infatuated with "doggies."
"He gets our money and goes to the pet shop -- all the time," she says in exasperation. "I think he's got 100 dogs."
'Ole George is about a million years old, she says as she walks away shaking her head. Maybe it's time he retires.
Sweet little Lily Brautigam, 4, says her mommy and daddy went to "George Washington, D.C., but I don't think they got to see the president guy."
That's probably because the poor overworked president is forced to work with papers all day inside his house, she says.
"He never goes outside," she adds sympathetically.
Brautigam says she doesn't want to be be rude, but she does not think President Bush is cute.
"He's just handsome like my brother. My brother's 3, and he's really handsome," she says as she tattles about the sibling that "drives my mom and dad crazy."
Brautigam agrees that being stuck in the "White Tower" all day would be awful. So what would she do if she had the problems of the country on her shoulders?
"I think I would just take a nap," she says. |
