Alas, poor Ronald. I knew him well.

Yesterday, Crowbar and I had McDonald's for lunch. As we ate our cheeseburgers, Crowbar looked at the picture of Ronald McDonald on his Happy Meal box and asked,

"Where's Ronald? I never see him here."

"What do you mean? His picture's everywhere."

"I mean the guy. Ronald the guy."

"He's not a real guy, honey. He's just a cartoon character."

"No he's not. I saw him on TV once. He's a real guy."

Then Crowbar furled his brow and got serious.

"Yeah, he was a real guy, but he died a few years ago."

"He died?" I asked.

"Yeah, that's why the made a statue of him," he reasoned, nodding toward the shiny Ronald McDonald statue out the window, greeting drive-thru patrons.

"They make statues of people when they die. Like the Statue of Liberty. She died a few years ago too," he said.

Crowbar shoved the last bite of his burger into his mouth and shrugged his shoulders in a 'yeah-what-are-ya-gonna-do gesture'.

I considered correcting him and quickly weighed the pros and cons of arguing over Ronald McDonald's death with a four-year old. I decided to drop it and change the subject to something less grim.

But now -- a day later, I worry that some day, Crowbar will be sitting in a fifth-grade classroom, looking at his history test and wondering why he got the question about the origins of the Statue of Liberty wrong.

Hopefully this time, Crowbar's short attention span will save him.