QUICKIES (Postings That Are Short and Sweet):

Five year old Emma has decided she does not want any brothers. Why? 
"Because a brother will just wrestle me up," she said. 
Seven year old Zoe's advice, Zoe with the three brothers.
"Just put a note on you bedroom door. 'NO BOYS ALLOWED.'"

Water Moose Crossing

"Look, everyone! There's a water moose with horns at Mr. Randy’s.”

Conner pointed to our next-door neighbor’s back pasture, and then went back to calmly digging in the sandbox. Conner is four.

The adult faction of my family sat on the back porch in the state of semi-stupor typical of our kind on the weekends. We watched Conner and the other grandchildren as they frolicked about the yard. We were hoping for a few moments of relative calm and possibly quiet—also no immediate need for moving any large muscles.

“What honey? What did you say?”

He pointed again and repeated himself. No one moved. No one twitched. No large muscles contracted. 

Here’s what we were hoping he said:  “Garble, larple!

There’s . . . some-wa-thing . . . garble with ha morns.”

What we were afraid he actually said:  “I need apple juice in a special sippy cup made of hammered gold, a snack that you’ll have to cook in a wok, my backpack that’s been lost for a month in Siberia, or the special bug jar from the attic.”

What we pretended he said: “How cute, he sees a bug.”

What we said (in a condescending adult way):  “What did you say Conner? Did you find a bug, honey?”

What Conner actually said, again: “I see it,” he said, pointing harder. “It’s a water moose with horns.” 

We looked at each other (parents, grandparents, and assorted relatives) and debated the possibilities, watching for signs that one of us was about to crack and get up off our big butts to go figure out if we were, in fact, being invaded by marauding water moose. 

“I think he’s seen a water bug.”

“He’s just pretending about something.”

“He’s playing.”

“He has sand in his mouth.”

“Maybe one of us should check it out?”

No one moved. No one twitched. Conner pointed and raised one eyebrow at us with the regal disdain of a four-year old.

“Oh for Heaven’s sake; I’ll go check.” I cracked and stood up. I’m always the first to crack and everyone knows it. They depend on it.

I walked up the gentle slope of the septic tank and looked for a water moose in our neighbor’s back pasture. Conner wandered over, standing next to me. Sure enough, a creature three parts gristle, six parts rawhide, and one part bovine had managed to jump a fence and wade through a designated wet lands area to forage and trespass. Chewing placidly, the old cow meandered around Mr. Randy’s property. Brown with a white blazed face, the old cow raised her head, displaying a hefty set of horns.

“You see?” Conner asked.

Conner looked up at me, trusting me to see the truth of it, knowing that I would. I gave him a quick nod. He smiled, winked and gave me a thumb’s up.

“Is there something there?” Some lazy grownup punk from the porch yelled.

“Sure. It’s a water moose with horns,” I called out.

“Yep.”  Conner nodded in companionship and agreement and then went back to the sandbox.

The water moose shook its horns at the sound of our voices and bolted. She waded back through the swamp hole and jumped the fence to become, nothing more or less, than a fat old cow with a sway back and tired udders.

My grandchildren never let ignorance of a thing hold them back. If they don’t know what to call something, they make it up. If they don’t understand, they ask. If they don’t have an answer, they do their best to figure one out.

“Zoe, why is the sky blue?” Conner wanted to know.

Stroking her little brother’s cheek, the way she had seen her mother do, Zoe gave it her best shot.

“Because Conner, blue is your favorite color, and Heavenly Father knows that it’s your favorite color, and so he made the sky blue—for you.”

And grownups think they have all the answers. I wouldn’t be too sure about that.

Linda (Water Moose Crossing Guard) Zern

A Water Moose By Any Other Name

Fire in the Hole

"You did what?"

My youngest son and I were in the checkout line at Kmart. He was confessing.

I was trying to look cool and unfazed, while choking on my own horror spit.

Youngest son was telling me that he and a couple of his buddies had been experimenting with an incendiary device of the low cost, high flammability variety—also illegal, probably, most likely . . . sweet Mother McCrea. I won’t bore you with the details, and that way you won’t have to testify at the trial.

“But don’t worry, Mom,” he assured me, “we couldn’t get it to blow up.”

Sweet Mother McCrea.

Beyond shocked, but still trying to play it cool, I looked to the gentleman behind the register and appealed to him for some kind of mature adult support. I was hoping he would roundly condemn the mercenary actions of my son and his gang of four.

The male cashier said, “Ah lady, that ain’t nothing. Me and my buddies burned down a bridge once, a big one.”

The elderly man behind us in line started to chuckle gently. The cashier joined in, giving us a conspiratorial wink and looking wistful.

“They still don’t know who did it, but that was in New York.”

Another man in line sighed—nostalgically.

I am ever puzzled by maleness.

I have never, ever had the overpowering desire to ignite, blowup, or dynamite anything. I do, occasionally, burn some lemon-scented candles when I soak in the tub—but not the same thing, I’m thinking. I have never heard my daughters chortle and exult with triumph because they can (and did) urinate on a fire. I have never had one of my female type friends confess a bridge, barn or hay wagon burning to me.

I have never heard any women of my association rejoice in their penchant for mayhem by saying, “Come on girls, let’s get some rags, a bottle and some gasoline, light it up and see what happens next.”

Let me think . . . nope . . . don’t remember any sleepovers like that.

Men are such a puzzle. If men aren’t from Mars then where are they from?

They’re from a place a lot farther away and hotter than Mars. That’s where. Burning down bridges, indeed, and if you don’t put that sharpened stick, chunk of rock, or spear down this minute, mister, you’re going to lose an eye, and then how are you going to see to light up all those Molotov cocktail fuses?

My tips on raising boys include setting up checkpoints for full body searches and always assuming that where there’s smoke, there is fire, or there’s going to be fire, or urine.  Always be ready to remind your boy child that burning down a bridge may sound like fun now, but does he really want to be working in the garden department at Kmart when he’s thirty-seven.

Pssssst . . . I have no idea how bridge burning and garden department cashiering are related, but that’s one of my strengths—verbal gymnastics and convoluted reasoning.

Linda (Fire Marshall) Zern