Scene: yesterday, early evening, at a store, picking up a few groceries with Little A. She was cheerful but kind of hyper, and kept running off to look at things or do things. While I was at the checkout, she ran back to the magazine racks for a moment, then dashed back and told me proudly “I just punched a magazine!”

“Honey, please don’t. I know you have a lot of energy right now, but remember, we’re going to the park on our way back, so you can run around there and work some of that off, without risking breaking anything here.”

“But Muime!” she replied, loudly enough to be audible to the entire checkout area, “It had Donald Trump’s face on it!”

About half a dozen people, including the cashier ringing in our stuff, looked like they were trying not to crack up, and a middle-aged woman in the line-up just across from us beamed at her and cried out “GOOD for you!”

Feeling equal parts proud, amused and mortified, I said “Sweetheart, your motives are great, but your methods are unsound,” to yet more amusement of the various bystanders.

Little A completely ignored this, in favour of running over to the woman who had congratulated her, and telling her “At home, I’m working on making a big cardboard target with his face on it, and I’m going to use it for target practice with ALL my Nerf guns!”

“You do that, honey, you do that!” she replied, smiling down at her as if she had just single-handedly restored her faith in humanity.