Veterans Day and the Play-Doh Wars

JayJay came home on Veterans Day and announced that he had learned about the Play-Doh Wars in school.

Huh?

I attended first grade and I had no memory of learning about the Play-Doh Wars.  So it must be a more contemporary war that had occurred after my first grade year so long ago.  But I keep up on current events and still the name didn't ring a bell.

So I speculated on what he could possibly be talking about.  Perhaps they had modeled historic battles with Play-Doh.  Perhaps they had actually had a Play-Doh war at school that day, lobbing gobs of brightly colored clay at each other across protective desk barriers.

In the words of C. S. Lewis, "Bless me, what do they teach them at these schools?"

I gave up trying to figure it out.  "What are the Play-Doh Wars?" I asked.

"They are in China," he said.  "My teacher showed us pictures of them."

Oooohhhh.  It clicked.  He was trying to say clay warriors.  He had learned about the Terracotta Army of the Chinese emperor Qin Shi Huang.