Spoiler Alert

My mom was spending time with Miss C the other evening while I ran an errand.  Later that night, with Miss C in bed, I got ready to read her a chapter of Anne of Green Gables.


We are close to the end, four chapters to go, and the rivalry between Anne and Gilbert has been going on three years.  Three years of intense silence, ignored apologies, grudges that seem Irish in their tenacity.  Because he called her Carrots.


( My siblings and I joke that when we spend time in Ireland, there is a list of people we are supposed to visit, and then a short list of people we are not supposed to talk to.  Because someone talked smack about someone else's cow forty years ago.  It's like honoring a grudge on behalf of deceased Great Aunt Mary McCreedy twice removed.  This is loyalty.  But because we often mix up the names on the lists, and because all Irish people look the same, we often find ourselves having tea and cookies with The Enemy.  And they make a good pot of tea.)


So I opened up Anne of Green Gables and Miss C sat up and said, "Nana said that Anne and Gilbert get married." 


She was half distressed, half in disbelief. 


"Well, I don't know.  Right now she's only fifteen."


"But Nana said so.  That it happens later.  I wish I didn't know that."


"Well, even if they get married, there are so many other things we don't know."


"But they don't even like each other.  So that's a big thing to know."


"That's called a spoiler."


"What's a spoiler?"


"It's when you're part way through a story, and someone accidentally tells you how it ends."


"So Nana's a spoiler.  I'll let her know."


"No no no, that's not what I said.  I said it's a spoiler.  Getting early information.  It is a spoiler.  People aren't spoilers."


"It's a spoiler because you said Nana's a spoiler and I'll let her know."


I think I might be added to that short list.