Judging Henry

As we were getting out of the car this evening, coming home, Daniel asked me, "Daddy, was Henry a bad guy?"

"Henry who?"

This turned out to be that moment, in every six-year-old boy's life, when he asks his father whether Henry VIII was a bad guy.

I might have hoped that Daniel would have forgotten the passages that Ian shared, regarding the illustrious marital career of Henry VIII, from his Horrible Histories book, but I should have known that Daniel would maintain a sharp recollection of this historical figure.

I tend to bristle at the category of "Bad Guys," now that the neocons have introduced it into the quasi-adult lexicon of American political life to contrast themselves with their low-tech counterparts in the Middle East. But I had a hard time saying anything to exonerate this prototype of the modern Western disposable-marriage paradigm.

Daniel had his own ideas about how Henry should have resolves his frustrations with his serial wives: "He should have waited."

"For what?"

"For them to have babies."

(January 24, 2012)