This is an example of what I love about the Internet

 

A friend saw this on the web and gave me a copy.  I’ve carried the copy around with me for a couple weeks and whenever a conversation would have a pause (those usually happen when I quit talking — I wish that wasn’t true, but it is), I would whip out my copy of this story, read it, and give everyone a laugh.

I hope you enjoy it too.

My Favorite Animal

Our teacher asked what my favorite animal was, and I said, “fried chicken”.

She said I wasn’t funny, but she couldn’t have been right, because everyone else laughed.

My mom and dad tell me to always tell the truth.  I did!  Fried chicken is my favorite animal.  I told dad what happened and he said my teacher may be a member of PETA.  He said they love animals very much.

I do too.  Especially chicken, pork and beef

Anyway, my teacher sent me to the principal’s office.  I told him what happened and he laughed too.  Then he told me not to do it again.

The next day in class my teacher asked me what my favorite live animal was.  I told her it was chicken.  She asked me why, so I told her it was becaue you could make them into fried chicken.

She sent me back to the principal’s office.  He laughed and told me not to do it again.

I don’t understand.  My mom and dad tell me to be honest, but my teacher doesn’t like it when I am.

Today, my teacher asked me to tell her what famous person I admired most.

I told her, “Colonel Sanders”. 

Guess where I am now . . .

I hope this at least made you smile.  Happy Tuesday!

Psycho Mom

DD and her girls know a family with eight children who enjoy calling their mom Psycho Mom when she gets a little irate about something they are doing.  So DD’s girls now sometimes call her Psycho Mom when she gets a little irate with something they are doing.

Recently DD and her brother, Gunny, had an interesting phone conversation:

DD:  When I want to warn the girls that I think they are getting wayyyy out of line, I will say something like, “Psycho Mom is on her way and we all know you don’t want that!”

Gunny:  Oh, I can picture that!

DD:  I don’t think so.  You couldn’t possibly imagine what Psycho Mom looks like.

Gunny:  Does she look anything like Psycho Sister?

DD:  Oh, yeah, okay maybe you do know what she looks like.

We raised a couple of really funny kids, when they aren’t being “psycho” of course.

Stamped on the memory of a little boy

A friend’s son was visiting them recently and he laughingly mentioned that he had thought they were on food stamps when he was little.

My friend was shocked!  She and her husband are long-time business owners, for goodness sake.  They have definitely never needed food stamps.

She asked him where he could have possibly gotten that idea?  He said when he was a little kid it just made sense to him that the “stamps” they received at the “food” store must be what people were talking about when they talked about “food stamps” .

Of course, what he was really talking about were the S&H Green Stamps that were given out at the grocery store when you checked out.  I remember taking mine home and faithfully pasting them in their little books and then taking my rubber-banded bunch of filled books to the stamp store (there were several around town) and “buying” things.  I especially remember that that is the way as a young mother when we didn’t have much disposable income, I was able to get our first set of the “in” dishes of the day, Corelle.  And, btw, this same friend told me that she still has champagne flutes that she keeps in their original box from the stamp store.  That’s kind of remarkable to me since I think the trading stamps went away about thirty years ago.

So, anyway, the son is an adult now and knows that Mom and Dad didn’t have to use food stamps.  But don’t you just wonder how many people that little guy may have told his mistaken idea?  I’m sure his parents have.

This reminds me of when we went to orientation for Gunny’s kindergarten class.  The teacher told us, “I promise not to believe everything your child comes to school and tells me, if you will promise not to believe everything your child comes home and tells you!”  Good idea.

There will be no further Re-marks!

Mommy was putting Susie in the bathtub before bed.  When she helped Susie out of her clothes, she was shocked to see blue marker all over Susie’s backside.

Mommy:  “What happened here!  How did all this blue marker get on you?!”

Susie: “Katie and Robbie and me were coloring with markers and we colored each other.”

Mommy immediately gave Susie a little talking to about how she should never pull down her pants, except when she was going to go potty.

Then Susie said:  “I bet Robbie is really going to be in trouble, because we colored his front side!”

A story told to me by a friend about her daughter who is now in her thirties.

I wonder if he’ll get a finder’s fee?

Austin said to his 3rd grade teacher, after the subject that she wasn’t married came up:  “You ought to meet my Uncle Brian!”

At home, Austin told his mom and dad what he had said to his teacher. They were surprised he had done that, but they really liked his teacher too and, now that he mentioned it, she did seem like she might be a good match for Mark’s last single brother, Brian.

So they invited Miss Teacher to a get-together at their home that would include “Uncle Brian”.

Miss Teacher and Uncle Brian hit it off, began dating and they are now engaged!

Austin may not get a finder’s fee, but it would be hard for Miss Teacher not to feel very kindly toward him, wouldn’t it?

His four brothers and sister are probably now looking at their teacher’s with a new eye, and wishing their dad had some more single brothers!

Another Bunny Tale …

 

Linda e-mailed me to remind me of this other bunny tale I hadn’t told.  Thank you, Linda.  (She has kept an on-line journal FOREVER, so she probably just did a search on “bunny” and came up with every one of the bunny stories I’ve ever told her.  Now, THAT is organization!)

So, here’s the story.

When our children were very little, we lived in an old house in a small town.  Our block was somewhat unusual because a hundred years before, a working canal had gone through there, and a slight indention was still evident where the canal had been.  So, there was something like a sunken park in the middle of our block that all our back yards backed up to.  It was all grass (mowed by a retired neighbor) with a few trees at our end and it had gradually filled in over the years, so the sides sloped gently only about four feet — a perfect playground for all the kids.

We were blessed in that neighborhood with lots of little kids about the same age who all played together well.  But, Mark, the little boy who lived down on the corner, while he did play well with the others, was unique in a couple ways.  First of all, he was a little bit older, but also he was a foster child who lived alone with his foster parents (who may have been his grandparents — I was never sure).  They seemed to be a very nice older couple, but I don’t think they spent much time with Mark.  Another thing unique about Mark was that he was a very serious little boy with a very low, kind of deadpan voice.  So, it was cute on several levels that he would come and knock on our door and when I would go to the door, he would say in his deep voice coming out of a little boy, “Can the Cop come out and play?”  That was Hubby.  And sometimes Hubby would go out and play catch with Mark, or push him in the swing — just spend some time with him. 

One Saturday morning the neighborhood kids were playing on the swing set in our back yard.  But, Hubby came inside and told me that there was a problem.  He pointed out the window and I could see the kids all clustered around, looking at a tiny baby rabbit.  I immediately noticed that the bunny was just sitting there, not trying to hop away.  Hubby said that was the problem.  The dog, which he had put in the kennel as soon as he saw what was happening, had gotten hold of the bunny and apparently had broken its back, because it couldn’t move. 

Hubby (thank you God, for a husband who could/would take care of things like this), said he was going to have to kill the bunny, but, of course, didn’t want the kids to see.  So, his plan was for me to bring a treat out on the back porch and corral the kids there while he took the bunny out in the canal and killed and buried it.  Our garage was detached and sat a little behind the house, blocking the view of some of the canal.

So, I did as he asked.  And, while I was talking to the kids and they were eating their treat, Hubby took a shovel out into the yard and scooped up the bunny.  When the kids wanted to know where he was going with the bunny, he told them he was going to let it go in the canal.

Okay, we had a plan.  We were going to spare the children from one of the harsh realities of life.  We thought.

When Hubby returned to the porch a few minutes later with an empty shovel, one of the kids said, “Did the bunny hop away?”  Hubby said, “No, the bunny died.  So, I buried it.”

Then Mark in his serious, low voice said, “Did it die before or after you hit it with the shovel?” Apparently I wasn’t doing as good a job distracting him as I was the smaller kids.

Hubby just said, “It was hurt when I took it out there and it died.”  Then I offered more snacks and changed the subject.

Bless his heart, Mark didn’t ask any more questions, and I don’t think the other kids caught on.

Sometimes even a well-intentioned plan just doesn’t work out as planned.

I hadn’t thought about Mark in a long time and when I re-read this story I suddenly had tears in my eyes.  I wonder where he is now? 

Dear Heavenly Father, whereever Mark is, I pray for his good health and happiness, and may He know you and Your love. Amen

Mama Remembered: An Overheard Conversation

 

    My three sisters in summer, 1933.  The baby is Martha Lou, then Betty Rose and Jean Marie.  Our brother, Jimmy, was born the next year and I was born 13 years later.

An excerpt from Mama’s book, I Remember:

Our house was pretty cold in the winter, so the kids wore long underwear and sometimes I let them sleep in it.  One night I heard Jean Marie say to Better Rose, “Your back door is open”.  Betty Rose replied, “My kitchen is hot.”  They were about four and three.

When I think about where their terminology might have come from, I can picture that, with no air conditioning, when Mama was in the kitchen cooking, she might have regularly said, “Whew, it’s hot in here, I’m going to open the door!”

Haven’t we all learned … children are always listening to and parroting what we say, sometimes in unexpected context!

Adoption Explained by a Six Year Old

 

“Mommy and Daddy needed a baby, and I needed a family, and they filled out paperwork, and blah, blah, blah and here I am.”

.. A six year old’s re-play to his mom (after his teacher told Mommy to be sure to ask him exactly how he told the story) of how he explained his adoption to his Sunday school class.

He was adopted from Russia as a baby.  The family now have a second son from Russia, and are “expecting” a new baby from China soon. 

God bless all parents who “need a baby, and find babies who need a family, and fill out paperwork and blah, blah, blah,” and make little babies who need a home their very own!

It’s Not Always Easy Being Grandpa!

 

When our granddaughter, Lulu, was four years old, Hubby was with her in a fast food restaurant when she said she needed to go to the bathroom. 

Hmmm. A kind of awkward situation for a grandpa to deal with.  So he took her to the door of the women’s restroom, asked if she could go by herself and she said yes, so he sent her in while he waited by the door. 

Several women employees were standing nearby and saw what was going on, so a few minutes later one of them came over and offered to go in and check on her just to make sure she was all right.  Hubby was grateful and thanked her. 

Shortly, the employee came out laughing and assured him Lulu was fine.  She said she had gone to the door of the stall and said, “Honey!  Are you doing all right?”  And Lulu had responded loudly, “GO AWAY.  I”M NOT YOUR HONEY!” 

Sweet little Lulu came out a few minutes later, after having definitely demonstrated that she’d learned the “don’t talk to strangers” lesson well!

Our friend, Bill, had a similar experience when he was at a mall with his granddaughter who was also about four years old.  But his granddaughter had apparently decided there were some people that were just too much “grandma” to classify as “stranger.”

Bill took his granddaughter to the restroom door, sent her in, and stood by the door.  Right after the little girl went in, an elderly woman tottered in.

After a few minutes, Bill heard his granddaughter say loudly, “Hey, lady.  Will you wipe me?”  Bill was mortified, but there was nothing he could do, but stand there and blush.

A few minutes later, Bill’s granddaughter came out, apparently properly wiped by the grandmotherly lady who couldn’t possibly be a “stranger!”

Little Problem Solvers

When Mama, Daddy and I moved here when I was 9 years old, there was a housing shortage and they had trouble finding a house, so we moved into a neighborhood of very small cape cods “for the time being.”  BTW, we were still living there when I got married 10 years later!

Anyway, these houses were all pretty much alike.  Luckily, our wonderful next-door neighbors, Betty and Lefty, had painted their house red, so we could always direct people to our house by where we were in relation to the RED house. 

We had alot of great memories in that little house, and two memories that come to mind involve some children who were real problem solvers.

The people across the street had 9 children!  You could practically see their house “breath” it was so full.  One day when I was a teenager, I was walking out our front door and saw the 3 year old over there walking across their front yard in just training pants.  (Hey, when you have 9 children, you’re probably glad the kid at least had underpants on when he went out to play and it was a hot summer day.) About the same time I noticed him, he stopped, pulled down his pants, took a large turd (can I use that word here?) out of his pants, layed it on the ground, pulled his pants back up, and walked on around the corner of the house!  I was shocked (and you know how easily teenagers can be shocked), in that “I can’t believe what I just saw!” way, but in his defense, I imagine you had to practically stand in line to get into the bathroom over there (I assume, like us, they only had one.), so even at his early age, he had just figured out another way to solved that problem!

Once, we had a family reunion in our little cape cod, when all four of my older siblings and their spouses and children came home for a long weekend.  One sister did live in town, so she and her husband were only there during the day, and I think another couple stayed at their house.  But ALL the children stayed together in a make-shift “dorm” of cots that Daddy set up in the family room in the basement — they loved getting to all sleep together in one very crowded room!  In general, for those few days, we were all just packed into that little house like sardines!  Well, as I mentioned before, we only had one bathroom, so it was a really busy room with all those people needing to use it. 

After the reunion, when Mama saw our next door neighbor, Betty out in the back yard, she told Mama a story that they shared a big laugh over.  My niece, Carol, who was about 6 years old at the time, had knocked on Betty’s door and very politely asked to use their bathroom!  She explained that there were just toooo many people at our house to get into our bathroom, and she realllly needed to go!

I don’t know what happened to the little “problem solver” across the street, but I do know that my niece, Carol is a very accomplished adult who I’m sure was aided in her successes by that same problem solving mind-set that was demonstrated when she was 6 years old and realllly had to go!