Under the heading of Kids Say the Darndest Things and Sometimes You Have to Tell People
My great-niece and her husband have a five-year-blonde son I’ll call John. They recently adopted a five-year-old son who is black. I’ll call him Bob. The boys are best buddies and call each other by name: “Brother.”
When other children told them they couldn’t be brothers because their skin is different, they displayed proof they’re siblings: their matching sneakers.
The Darndest Thing:
A couple of weeks ago, the family took a road trip. They were making the very long drive home when John announced from the back seat, “My butt hurts.”
Bob remarked, “My butt doesn’t hurt. That’s because black people have big, squishy butts and white people don’t.”
I told their mother that when Bob meets the rest of her family, at least some of us a couple of generations back, he’ll change his mind about white people’s butts.
***
I have permission to share this story. I changed the names so as not to embarrass the principals in case future girlfriends run across the post.
***
Not what we’re talking about, but in the vicinity, and I wanted a graphic
When I was a child, my family lived across the street from a couple whose daughter, Denise, was almost three years old. Denise had blonde hair her mother put up in a curly little pony tail. She was as cute as a bug and as bright as a button, but not as sweet as pie. She wasn’t a holy terror, but her attitude often (most of the time) made her difficult to deal with. She was just plain contrary, and she made sure everyone knew it. Her favorite word was, “NO.”
One evening she and her mother, Phyllis, was sitting with us in our front yard, as they did nearly every summer evening. Phyllis sat in a glider and Denise stood in the seat beside her.
In the course of the conversation, Phyllis said, “We’ve had quite a day.” She went on to say–in vague terms–that there had been much discussion, much disagreement about what and how things would, and would not, be done, starting at breakfast time and running nonstop for the rest of the day–but she thought an agreement had finally been reached. Then she looked at her daughter and said, very sweetly, “But we’re not going to use that word any more, are we, Neesie?”
Denise leaned over, got right in her face, and said, in a very nasty tone, “NNNNNNNNNNO.”
The audience erupted in laughter.
And Denise beamed.
*
I would like to say there’s a moral to this story, but after decades of pondering, I haven’t found one. If you can think of anything, please leave it in a comment.
Two witches stand over a boiling cauldron, one stirring, the other sampling the brew from a spoon.
And the stirrer says to the sipper, “I only use local children.”
If Shakespeare had been a locavore, he might have written this. Or not.
Eye of tot, and toe of tad,
Lambkin’s hair, and lip of lad,
Nipper’s nose, and small fry’s ear,
Moppet’s tooth, and rug rat’s tear,
But for charms of most unrest,–
Teenyboppers serve up best.
###
Thanks to author Kaye George, for posting on Facebook the cartoon that inspired the flight of fancy resulting in my (questionable) homage to William Shakespeare and Macbeth. The cartoon is on her FB page.
Jeff Stahler is the cartoonist. To see more of his work, click on his name.
” The following photo is the PHOTO PROMPT. What does it say to you? I dare you to look beyond the subject. I double dare you!”
I looked far beyond the subject: The rings of metal at the base of the metal skeleton reminded me of a spring, which reminded me of a pogo stick, which prompted my 100-word story. Maybe I’ll look more closely at the reptile and try again. There’s a lot of potential in that lizard.
Friday Fictioneers: Write a 100-word story based on the prompt.
PHOTO PROMPT – Copyright – Madison Woods
Screams pierced the air. The woman dropped her trowel and raced across the yard. “What happened?”
Pushing through a ring of children, she lifted the crying child, examined the swelling lip.
A Greek chorus erupted.
“–wasp–”
“–hydrant–”
“—stung–“
“Lisabeth, I told you not to drink from the hydrant.” Then, turning, “She’s four. You’re ten–”
“I was rescuing Kitty from–Mom, I can’t watch her every second.”
“Get the baking soda.”
TLC applied, the woman returned to gardening.
Screams pierced the air. She ran.
“Lisabeth teased Kitty and–“
“Lisabeth, I told you–”
***
Every Wednesday,Rochelle Wisoff-Fields issues theFriday Fictioneerschallenge. She posts a picture prompt and invites readers to write stories of 100 words or fewer and to post them on their blogs the following Friday. This week’s prompt ishere(scroll down the page to see it). Rochelle’s story follows it.
To read more stories by Friday Fictioneers, click on the frog, below.
Consequently, the average age in the coffee shop–aka my office–is considerably lower than usual. I estimate it at approximately two.
Normally I filter out noise and activity to concentrate on writing. The ability to hyperfocus is a gift.
Today, however, what’s going on around me is more interesting than the story to be revised.
Behind and to the right, a little-bitty with black eyes and a pixie cut sings, “E-I-E-I-OOOOO.” She began in atonal mode but soon picked up the melody.
Directly behind me, a little boy I imagine as blond protested. “I don’t like to sit down.” Then he shrieked and wailed.
“OoooooooooooooooooOoooooooooooooooooOooooooooooooooo.” Finally he settled down to snuffling. I assume at some point, probably while the Ooooooooos were wearing down, he sat. Now he’s either resigned to his fate or he’s left the store.
There’s been a lot of wailing today. I don’t know why, considering the petting zoo is here. Maybe it’s tension. Maybe it’s that little kids are like adults: some days you get out of bed in a snit and you just have to share it.
Mothers have changed since I was a child. In my day, a mother would have taken the child outside and given him a choice: behave or go home and not get to see the animals or have a cookie or whatever special treat has been promised. I don’t know a child who was actually hauled home, and I don’t know a parent who meant what she–or he–said, but generally things quieted down a bit.
Something similar happened to me when I was a child. But I wasn’t offered a choice. And I wasn’t hauled home. I imagine a lot of people wished I had been.
At church one Sunday, the Methodist little-bitties–or, as one of my teacher friends calls them, ankle-biters–were all decked out to stand at the front and sing a song. Our teacher, who should have known better, had seated us in a pew, side-by-side. While the adults were doing their thing, Helen Ruth and I took the opportunity to converse.
My parents sat in the pew right behind us. They disapproved of talking during the service. My father picked me up, took me out on the front porch, and gave me a swat.
First United Methodist Church of Fentress, 2015. By MKW.
Ours was a small country church, and Daddy and I were maybe twenty feet from the back pew, so the congregation got the full benefit of my caterwauling.
And when we returned to the sanctuary, I refused to perform with the rest of the class.
Have I mentioned I don’t remember any of this?
Talking in church got me in trouble, but the swat got Daddy in trouble.
Because Mother blamed him for my declining to stand in front of the communion rail and be cute–and she was right; no way would I display myself in front of a bunch of people who’d heard that swat–and she stayed righteously indignant for the rest of her life. Periodically, she would say, “I was so mad at your father. All he had to do was lean over and say, ‘Girls, stop talking.'”
What really got her goat was that I refused to perform in Sunday school programs for several years thereafter.
I can’t fault my father, however. An inexperienced parent, he was trying to do the right thing.
Knowing what I do about myself, I’m sure I was angry and embarrassed. I was an eminently embarrassable child. I was also obstinate.
I know something else, too.
Years later my parents and I were sitting in the First Methodist Church in San Marcos, waiting for the choir to perform selections from The Messiah, when Daddy said, “I haven’t been in this church since I was ten years old.” That was 1925. “I went to Sunday school with Johnny Graham [a cousin], and they made me stand up and say my name and where I was from, and I never went back again.”
So there you are. Embarrassable is hereditary. So is obstinacy.
It gives me satisfaction to know that if my father had been removed to the front porch and given a swat, he wouldn’t have just refused to sing with his Sunday school class.
My father would have waited fifty years before he darkened that Methodist door.
***
I started this post for the purpose of telling a personal anecdote about a petting zoo but somehow got off onto Methodists and lost my way back. Because I have much more experience with Methodists–and Presbyterians and Baptists–than I do with petting zoos, it’ll be a while before I return to the animals. But that’s okay, because the church stories are a lot more interesting. And you won’t read them anywhere else.
I feel lousy! Oh so lousy! I feel lousy, and frowzy, and a fright!
And that’s the truth.
My whole body, except for my brain, is out of commission. My brain is set on Grouse. To the widest audience I can find.
I’ve already told my niece and my great-niece, through Facebook, what I think about a couple of things. Niece offered to buy me a drink. I suggested codeine or paregoric instead. Great-niece hasn’t responded.
At this point, even the brain is running out of steam, so, gentle readers, you will be spared the Grouse. Instead, I will post pictures of a family get-together in Houston a year–two?three?–ago.
Both of the mothers said I could post photos of their children. The children’s grandmother didn’t give permission to post a photo of her, but she doesn’t get to say. When I was sixteen and she was almost twice that, and old enough to know better, she set an ice pack on my stomach in the middle of the night, when I was sound asleep.
I have forgiven her, but I will never forget.
Anyway, here are a bunch of very bad photos of people having fun.
P. S. I’ll see how many of gentle family are aware of this blog by counting the number of comments I get from them here and on Facebook.
Elizabethan Museum, Totnes. The Victorian nursery, with a courtyard through the window. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I dragged through yesterday because I’d stayed up late the night before, finishing Susan Hill’s novel The Woman in Black. I’d planned to get to bed at a decent hour but made the mistake of turning one page too many and, as so often happens in cases such as this, all was lost. I couldn’t stop reading until I’d turned the last page.
I first heard of The Woman in Black from Kate Shrewsday, who said in a blog post,
“Susan Hill, a masterly ghost story teller, uses the nursery as the very epicentre of her masterly tale. An old house has unhappy history with tragic death at its centre. And those who died had lives which circulated about the nursery.”
The description sounded promising, so–after nearly six months of alternately remembering and forgetting–I got my hands on the book. It’s masterly, all right, a ghost story whose horror increases after the book has been returned to the shelf.
Now I’ll drag through tomorrow because of an inconvenient compulsion to post tonight. I’m probably already in hot water, because I have to be up and out before daylight, and my cousin Mary Veazey, the bossy one–you might remember her as the one who fell asleep while I was reading aloud the latest installment of my novel–well, anyway, she told me three hours ago to pack my suitcase and go to bed. I said I would but I didn’t.
Well, it’s too late to do anything about that now. Pun intended.
Before I get to the suitcase part, however, I’ll take a couple of minutes to link to a video of a little girl talking to a 911 operator about her father, who is having a heart attack. It has a happy ending. You may have seen it already–I’m usually the last one to discover such things–but if you haven’t, enjoy.
M. K. Waller 