Oh, Romilly.  You are full of surprises aren’t you?

Today at our homeschool group, the kids were learning about American Indians.  This, as you may know, is Romilly’s favorite topic in the whole world right now.  After Mr. Steve finished his little lesson, Pippa raised her hand (See?  They are learning some school skills after all!)

“My sister knows a lot of Indian stories,” she proudly informed Mr. Steve.

Mr Steve looked at Romilly… “Does she?… Would you like to tell us one?”

And before I knew  what was happening, my six-and-a-half-year-old was standing in front of a group of 40 or so adults and children of all ages, wearing an Indian headress fashioned out of a yellow balloon, and sharing, in horrific, gory detail, how the Nez Perce tribe came to be.  There was a coyote, and a monster, and a rattlesnake who wasn’t so fierce while the monster was eating him, and a fire, and something about the east and the west and the north and the south, and a sprinkling of blood right in this spot here.  And then a tribe came to be there.  The end.  I didn’t know whether to be proud or mortified.

The craziest part was that I had never read or heard the story before in my life.  We apparently have Kaya, the American Girl, to thank for filling our daughter’s head with grisly Indian legends.  Awesome.

Who’d have guessed that our delicate little introvert, who spent a good deal of her formative Sunday school years hiding under the table to get away from the other children, would be such a natural at public speaking?