Losing trust

My sister Marie was reading the weekly e-mail update from
her daughter's kindergarten teacher. Amid reminders about library day and an
upcoming popsicle party, Mrs. R. noted that the class had visited a
presentation by the fifth graders about 9/11 and the bin Laden compound. In an
attached photo, my niece's kindergarten class stands smiling for the camera in
front of a painted mural of the twin towers engulfed in flames.

In a second photo, the class is watching a scene on the
elementary school stage. Fifth graders dressed in fatigues stand beneath an
American flag, with their play guns all pointed at the same target: a child
dressed as Osama bin Laden. He is slumped on the ground, his forehead streaked
with fake blood.

My sister feels sick. She's been answering questions,
questions that she wasn't prepared to answer for a daughter who wasn't prepared
to know--not yet, and not this way. "She can't unlearn this," my sister
lamented. "She can't unsee this."