Do Unto Otters?

When I cook, Margot likes to pull a chair up to the counter behind the stove, stand on it, and watch me. Last night I made black bean soup in the crockpot (from scratch! I actually soaked dried beans. It was good, too.) and turkey burgers. Margot watched from her usual perch. While the burgers sizzled on the stove, she complained that it was too hot.

"Have you ever heard the saying, 'If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen?'" I asked her. She looked at me, puzzled.

"No," she said. "That doesn't even make sense."

Ok, so the idiom was over her head. I explained that it was a saying, and I told her what it meant. She seemed relieved that I wasn't telling her to literally get out of the kitchen.

"We have a saying at school," she countered after a few minutes. "Do unto otters as you want them to do unto you."

I laughed and laughed. "It's not 'otters', Margot," I told her. "It's others. Other people. Do unto others as you want them to do unto you."

"No, Mommy," she insisted. "It's otters. The book is about otters."

Alas, she gets the last laugh. I found this on an Amazon search. Clever!