Beth is a tough nut to crack, but she’s even harder to read. The lead into the new school year had all the emotion of a new pair of socks. (What do I have against socks? Why am I picking on socks in general? As a child, I was permanently scarred by the cruel and unusual gift of socks on Christmas morning.) It was so unlike my experience. I remember the first day of elementary school with all…
This morning someone approached me and asked if Cheryl was hanging in there. I laughed. Why? I was immediately struck by the very real image of an ever more spacious womb. So I said the first thing that came to mind. “She’s hanging, but it isn’t in.”
O.K., so it wasn’t the perfect thing to say in the coffee line at church. I got the heretofore expected blank stare, so…
Picture a large room with a heavy duty anchor in middle of the ceiling, a five foot long net hanging from this single anchor, and a new piece of furniture off to one side. How long do you suppose it would take a seven year old child to figure out this new piece of furniture would make a good launching point for a wicked cool Tarzan swing?
If you were the mother of this child, would you be angry if…
Yesterday morning my wife asked me to do some laundry.
“Cheryl? The sum total of whites in the hamper equals six. That’s four socks and two shirts. Are you sure you want that done?”
To make a long response short, she answered in the affirmative. Sometime later, she asked if I had made any progress with the laundry.
“Cheryl, there were only six things to wash. I think I can…
It started in the most unlikely of places; a peanut butter on wheat bread sandwich. All right, I’ll admit that wheat bread is a little suspect on it’s own (I’ll take my flour bleached and enriched, thank you very much!), but desperate times lead to hasty choices on the bread isle. In short (and with no further explanation), all I had was wheat bread to satisfy my hankering for a…
In an age where everything has a sub-category (new-born, infant, toddler, tweener, teenager, young adult, ad infinitum), I have no idea what to call to Beth. To me she is simply a child. Like children from sea to shining sea, her life is about as complicated as a Happy Meal toy. Why then is she singing along with the radio in the back seat with passion, “… why’d you have to go…
Death? Taxes? The Yankees wining another World Series? A six year old child with an attention deficit, a pinch of hyperactivity, and a bow and arrow?
Yes, Beth had a busy day on Wednesday. I was picking her up from camp and her group leader was explaining all of the activities they participated in that day. They started with a hike through a local park, followed by some canoeing, another hike…
Before this weekend I had never subjected myself to the pleasure of facing a baseball hurtling in my general direction within the confines of a chain link “cage.” It turns out that this pleasure can be had for only $1.50. That $1.50 gets you twenty pitches. That is twenty opportunities to humiliate yourself in front of strangers, family and friends alike. That is less than eight cents…