I've been reading one of my very favorite books with my daughter this past week. THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE. I still remember going to get it at a book warehouse before there were big box bookstores, the boxed set, with my special blue group or whatever they called the gifted class in the mid-eighties. I kept that boxed set my entire life, because it was the only boxed set I owned in childhood (that I recall or that I kept track of), and it has sat on my bookshelf until now, when I finally was able to interest my daughter in hearing the story of Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy.

Initially, it didn't move fast enough for her, but by the time the Beavers appeared, she was hooked. Then when we got to the part in which Aslan gives the kids their weapons and tells the girls they were really just for back-up because girls shouldn't fight, my girl -- who had been lying down with her back to me, practically asleep -- actually rolled over and said, "When was this WRITTEN?"

And that, my friends, is how quickly culture changes.