Edith's insights (and insults?)

"You know the good thing, if you're a servant who has been working all your life and you get set free or something, and you go to live in your own house: You know how to do lots of things. But if you're someone who has had servants all your life and you have to go live in your own house with no servants, you don't know how to do anything."

So says the seven year old working her way through Seasons 1 and 2 of Downton Abbey on Amazon.

***

My colleague asks if she can drop off a suitcase at our apartment for a few days before a school field trip, so she doesn't have to lug it with her on a crowded train at rush hour the day of. I say sure. 

She comes by to drop it off, and Edith answers the door.

"Hi, Edith," she says, "can I leave my suitcase here?"

Edith: "There's nothing illegal in it, is there?"

(Too many public warnings about accepting baggage you didn't pack yourself?)

***

A friend needed to appear in traffic court for a ticket and borrowed our car to get there, since his wife was using theirs.

Edith, first: "I don't think we should lend our car to someone who drives through red lights."

Edith, next: "I don't know if Alice and I should play with someone whose dad is a criminal."

Considering that she was in the backseat when I was pulled over* in southern Virginia last month for what turned out to be one of the state's most expensive moving violations,^ I'm not sure what she's thinking about our mother-daughter relationship going forward.

*The first time in almost 22 years as a driver, let my embarrassed internal-good-girl make haste to say
 ^Continuing to drive in the right-hand lane when there is a stopped police vehicle on the side of the road up ahead. Who knew?