A Toddler Explains Hell Using a Guidebook of Italy

The following post recounts a conversation that took place in our household on the Tuesday before Easter Sunday, the Year of our Lord, two thousand and twelve.

Names have not been altered.

In this conversation: Dada the Wise, Abby the Toddler, and Very Italian Uncle "Taco" (toddler for 'Franco').

Abby: Dada, Do you have a sister?

Dada: Yes, Abigail.

Abby: Where is she?

Dada: She’s in Heaven.  

Abby: What’s Heaven?

Dada: It’s where we go when die if we have been good.

Abby:  (thinks about it) Where do you go if you are bad?

Dada: You go to hell.

Abby: What's hell?

Dada: It's where the bad guys live.

Abby: Bad guys?  Well...what do they do?

Dada. They hurt you.

Abby:  Why do they hurt you? 

Dada:  Because that’s what they do.

Abby: (frowns) I don’t want to go there.  I'm going to go to Heaven.

Cute as heck, right?

Later that evening, when Very Italian Uncle Franco, aka "Taco"  comes to visit:

Abby: (holding a guidebook of Italy, reading a 'story' to our visitor)  ...and the Spanish ships invaded Italy.  Oh...Uncle Taco, that’s Hell.

Very Italian Uncle Taco: That's Italy, Abby, not Hell.

Abby: No. That's hell (pointing to something in the guidebook)...

Taco: (looks to where she is pointing) No Abby, that's not Hell.  That's a cathedral...

Abby:  Uncle, that's hell.

Taco: No Abby, that's a church.

Abby: (thinks about it, then points to a picture of a big spider*) Ok…that’s hell.

Taco: The spider?

Abby: Yes.  (she then turns to a map of Sicily)  What's this, Uncle Taco?

Taco: That's Sicily.

Abby:  Sicily?  Ok...that’s Hell.

Taco:  Yes, Abby.  Yes, it is.

(No offense intended to any Sicilians out there!  And if you are unfamiliar with the dynamics between Sicilians and main land Italians, let's just say that Sicilians don't consider themselves Italians, and nor are they considered so by the folks living on the 'boot')!

*Where in Italy are there famous spiders?  Anyone?