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Remember how I said I threw the crackers away? I mentioned the dumpster, but that wasn’t quite accurate. I threw them in our garbage can, with plans to take the garbage out to the dumpster when Addie woke up from her nap.

Only, you know how it is. She woke up, she wanted a snack, I decided to do a little cleaning around the house. One thing led to another and I still hadn’t taken the garbage out a couple hours later. That’s when Addie calmly walked over to the garbage can, opened the lid to throw something away, and spotted the crackers.

“Crackers!” At first she was just excited. But then she saw the look on my face. Without a word, she knew I wasn’t going to let her have them. So she started screaming. “Crackers!!!  Craaaaaa-ckers!”

The lesson here is, obviously, take out the garbage right away when there’s something in it your kids aren’t allowed to have. There’s another lesson, too, though.

Even today, with the crackers long gone, she occasionally goes over to the garbage can and asks, almost timidly, “Crackers?”

I don’t think it’s about the food, so much. I don’t even know that she wants to eat them. I think she feels a property interest in those damn crackers. That kindly old homeless lady gave those crackers to Adeline. Who am I to take her property away without her permission? In Adeline’s little toddler mind, I stole those crackers from her and that’s just not right. You guys, I think we’ve just seen that the foundation of a property-rights-based legal system is rooted in our nature as human beings.

Bet you didn’t know things were going to get that deep.

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