Just as I was falling hopelessly and eternally in love with baby dragons, the Wonderland Avenue curriculum moved on to Greek myth. My bus, traversing the moneyed community of Laurel Hills, passed by a set of golden gates every morning, as tall as houses and ostentatiously bedecked with a glittering chrome sign reading "Mount Olympus" in scripty lettering. Naturally, I was happy to learn that I lived right near the famous Mount Olympus, and I yearned to go there. I was confused when my friend Lindsay told me that all that lay inside were big mansions for rich people. "You mean mortals?" I asked. "Well, I think so," she said, suddenly unsure.
Somehow, none of the parents were fussy enough to censor the parts about Zeus impregnating different ladies while dressed up as different barn animals. Thank the Gods for that, because these parts of the story caused me no end of mind-expanding consternation. Why would the ladies want to go anywhere with some strange cow, even if it was white as snow? What were they doing over there? Did cows do that with ladies? Could they? And, most importantly, why were the babies that resulted from whatever the heck they were doing half-God, and not half-cow? I mean, we were second-graders, not total idiots. We knew how DNA worked, roughly. Brown-haired parents made brown-haired children. Cows made cow babies. It didn't matter if the cow was Zeus or Captain Kangaroo. It was totally simple, and a matter of science.
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