Tag: childhood

Fishing

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I used to go fishing with my grandfather.
No, I didn’t go on a boat or a dock to dish.
Instead, we’d go to the aquarium after dark and fish in the really big tank.
Not only is the water clear, but there’s a lot of really cool fish in there.
Okay, so there’s some really dangerous things in there like sharks, but you can yank the line up when those get close.
Or so we thought.
Grampa lost a foot. Ouch.
Good news, though: they recovered the shoe out of the shark’s stomach.
As if he needed it anymore.

The Dog Still

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Boy, there comes a time in every kid’s life when he’s got to say goodbye to a pet. Do it without crying and whining and raising a fuss.
It’s your dog. I kinda used him to make a whiskey still.
Oh, sure, there was some leftover bits and pieces, but I went ahead and buried them in the back yard.
The rest is just chuggin away in the shed, makin that moonshine your grampaw sells in town.
So, don’t go cryin, and don’t go pettin’ my still or playin fetch with it.
Here. Have a sip. Hair of the dog.

The Talking Kid

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We love our kid.
How can we not? He’s our kid.
One disappointment with him, though. Our boy didn’t start talking until he was four.
But when he started, he just couldn’t shut up.
He talks all the time.
During meals.
In the bath.
In the preschool.
And even in his sleep.
Some of it makes sense, but the vast majority of what comes from his mouth is nonsensical babble.
So, we give him gum to chew. When he chews gum, he can’t talk.
He blows bubbles now. Popping all the time.
But it’s not as annoying as the babble.

The Sleeper

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My little girl couldn’t fall asleep.
So I told her to close her eyes, think of clouds, and count slowly to ten.
She always fell asleep at five or six.
But one night, she got to ten.
And she was by the bed, shaking me.
Wake up, Daddy, she said.
She does it to her classmates, at their desks.
She doesn’t even have to count out loud.
She just thinks of clouds and counts to ten.
What happens when you count backwards? I ask her.
She shakes her head. No, she says.
I feel tired, so I don’t ask again.

Rite of Passage

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Some societies have complex and deadly rites of passage. The elders really bust your ass.
Others require that simple rituals be performed. That kind of cake walk makes for a weak man and a weak tribe.
The times sure have changed since my tribe roamed these lands, before fences. Before the white men came.
My great-grandfather had to hunt ten rattlesnakes on his own. Now, my grandson gets a hundred bucks worth of chips and is told to make it last the evening.
Otherwise, we’ll throw a rattlesnake at him.
Maybe the times haven’t changed all that much after all.

Fireflies

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Me and Teddy, we go firefly catching in the summer.
We always go firefly catching, we do.
Teddy, he ain’t got no arms.
That don’t stop him.
He catches them lighting bugs in his mouth, and I hold up a jar for him to spit them in.
Bam. I put the lid on.
“Ain’t they pretty, Bobby?” He say. “They so pretty, they is.”
Teddy, he go off to college, leave me here with my jar. he smart and stuff.
I wonder if he go firefly catching.
Probably not. He ain’t got no arms. Or me to hold his jar.

The Night Of A Thousand Stars

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“Make a wish, Daddy.”
A tiny finger points to the night sky, silver streaks crisscrossing over each other.
“Those aren’t shooting stars,” I said.
No, they were satellites.
And it was my fault.
After the Russians hit one of ours, we agreed to hand over orbits and frequencies to each other.
I wrote the database.
Everything worked beautifully in the tests.
But the moment the tracker went online, every satellite with propulsion went into controlled deorbit. The rest shut down or exploded.
My daughter pinched me. “Make a wish.”
So, I did.
I wish I had checked my code again.

Alphabet Soup

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My daughter loves it when I make her alphabet soup.
But every now and then, she complains that a letter is backwards or upside-down.
“Just turn the damn bowl,” I say. “It all tastes the same.”
No, she won’t. She will stare at it and whine loudly.
“There is nothing wrong with this soup,” I say, and I eat a spoon of it. “See?”
She still won’t eat it.
I offer to make her a different soup, but she wants alphabet soup.
I blindfold her and slide the bowl in front of her.
Shut up and eat it, or starve!

Molly

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By day, Molly Scott’s soul is where it belongs – inside Molly, making Molly uniquely Molly.
If you’ve read her books, you’ll know what I mean. Children’s books totally unsafe for children. “Cooking With Broken Glass” and “Boogertime Blues” are favorite of mine.
At night, her soul wanders and resides in a CPR dummy in Fairfax.
It was during a late First Aid class that I discovered this phenomenon. Five chest compressions, pinch the nose, breathe in, and a slow, faint whisper: this is why I do not dream.
No movement, no animation. Just plastic.
I switched to a cooking class.

Never

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We all stared at the turtle in its terrarium.
They named it Never.
“What kind of name is Never?” I asked.
The twins both shrugged at the same time.
They did that kind of thing, shrugging and smiling and sneezing together.
And they were always in agreement.
Even if it was something weird, like naming their pet turtle “Never.”
“I still don’t understand why you two wanted a turtle,” I said. “Why not a dog or a cat?”
And they shrugged again.
Sure, they’re my kids. I love them.
But it can be really, really creepy when they do this.