New Song

This evening, Tina the three-year-old announced her need of “colors” (crayons).  Unwilling to entrust an entire box of crayons to her at once, I gave her first the yellow one, then exchanged the yellow for the orange, and so on through the five or six crayons in the box.  Finally I explained to her that she had used every color in the box.  “Do you want to use one of them again?”, I asked.

“Uuummmm,” Tina mused, “I want….” She made a fumbling motion with her fingers as though trying to count something.  Finally she managed to stick up a thumb:  “This one!”  For a moment, I was at a loss:  thumbs up means what now?  But in the end I decided that the thumb corresponded to orange, and I handed her the appropriate item.  She was ecstatic.

After a moment, she handed the orange back and fumbled with her fingers again.  “I want….”  She had to use her left hand to hold down the other fingers of her right hand so her right index finger could stand up alone:  “This one!”  I decided that the index finger corresponded to purple.  “I like purple!” she exclaimed.

Upon returning the purple crayon, she fumbled again.  “I want….”  Now when she succeeded in getting finger #3 to stand up alone and showed it to me, there followed an awkward moment requiring careful control of the facial muscles, but I decided that finger #3 corresponded to green and we moved on.  “I like green!” she said.

And so we went, all the way through finger #5.  I can only guess that her finger gestures meant something like first, second, third, fourth, fifth, although no one has ever shown her such a thing.  Kind of clever of her to think it up!

Tonight Jacinta and I and the older kids played Ticket to Ride.  The game board is a map, and the pieces are railroad cars, and the goal is to build a network of railroads.  At the beginning of the game, each player is assigned routes to accomplish, and beyond that a player wins more points for having more cars on the board, and an extra bonus for having the longest continuous chain of them.  So there are a number of factors to keep in mind at once while deciding whether to draw more cards, lay down train pieces, or look at new routes:  Am I making my assigned route?  Am I keeping a line continuous?  How do I maximize my number of cars?

Undaunted by the complexity of the situation, David the ten-year-old plugged away cheerfully.  Towards the end of the game, with obvious pleasure, he used his turn to lay out two railroad cars that didn’t maximize his number of cars, didn’t keep the line continuous, and didn’t appear to make any headway toward any assigned route.  “David, what are you doing?” his mother asked.

“I’m adding the feet to my flamingo,” he explained.  And suddenly we all saw that David was winning his own private contest:  all his railroad cars taken together made an elaborate picture of a long-legged bird.

The humor of the situation didn’t come just from the suddenness of the revelation, or from the untroubled contentment on David’s face.  It was also funny because all of us with our long, continuous railways suddenly saw that–Hey!  My cars don’t make a picture!

The challenge in this Funny Thing of Today project, I have found, is not locating the funny thing.  Between founding a college with 120 teenagers at work and overseeing a family with six kiddos back home, I’m awash in funny things.  The trick is locating a funny thing that still comes across as funny in writing.  If it’s a “You kinda had to be there” moment, then it does nothing for this blogger.

So at dinner tonight, Tina the three-year-old announced that she did not like her dinner.  “It’s icky!” she shouted.  “Your pasta is not icky,” her mother replied serenely, but Tina repeated:  “My pasta is icky!”

“Have some beans.”

“My beans are icky!”

Whereupon Tina flung her head back as far as it would go and pooched out her lips in that ultra-pouty expression that–well, are you a parent?  Then you’ve seen the expression I mean.  “Poochy lips!” went up the cry from kids around the table, “Tina’s doing the poochy lips!”

And in a moment of inspiration, I added to the chorus:  “Icky poochy lips!”

Then commenced a great battle on Tina’s face.  The whole notion, the sound, the texture of the very words “icky poochy lips” filled her three-year-old soul with giggles, but her stubborn three-year-old irascibility wanted to maintain the poochy lips, icky or no.  Her lips, stuck out as far as her little facial muscles could extend them, writhed and wriggled between pooch and grin.  Then all collapsed, and a smile broke over her face like sunrise over the prairie.

“No,” she said, laughing, “not icky!”

And I laughed the rest of the evening.  It was–well, it was–well, I guess you just had to be there.

The circumstances for Funny Thing of Today #3 were not so funny.  The little girls made such a hash of their bedroom that they couldn’t clean it themselves, so Jacinta went to work on it.  While she was in the back room, the little darlings pulled out all the children’s hats and mittens and threw them around the kitchen.  She made them pick that mess up and then went back to continue excavations in their bedroom, and while she was gone again they snuck paint up from the basement to play at face painting.

OK, so maybe that’s a little bit funny.  In retrospect.

Enter Papa, also known as The Enforcer.  I recounted the sad series of events to Regina, who at seven years old is the oldest and the ringleader of the three.  “So why did you bring the paint up?”, I concluded.  “Why did you do that?”

In a voice full of woe, Regina replied, “I guess I must have lost my mind!”

We drove up to Riverton to Wal-Mart today to visit their Vision Center so my oldest daughter could have an eye exam.  (I told her she was going to have her head examined, but she didn’t want to grant my argument that the eyes are part of the head.)  On the front door of the Supercenter was this sign:  “Absolutely no returns on Christmas decor items after December 24.”

And that, for me, was the Funny Thing of Today.  The image it presents of someone so pathetic that he not only decorates his apartment for the big party with strictly Wal-Mart decor, but he doesn’t even plan to pay for it–he’s that cheap. You can’t make this stuff up.

“Is there a problem with these items, sir?”

“Well, they just don’t fit my apartment decor anymore.”  ‘Cause it’s December 26–the Christmas look is so yesterday!

[Note:  In the voting for FTT #2, the Wal-Mart sign edged out, but barely, an advertisement on the back of a truck announcing “Coffins for Cowboys and Indians”–hand made and custom designed!]

David has published his newspaper again.  He has learned so much about formatting and such that I think he’s ready to “go public” and make it available to the whole family.

Click HERE to read The Clip!