"I Smoke!!!"

I recently observed my nine-year-old granddaughter flaunting her superior lifestyle before her six-year old younger brother with such arrogance and pride that I couldn't help but be reminded of a story my mother used to tell us on many occasions.

First the conversation between the Grandchildren:
Granddaughter (who had spent the night before and the whole day with her older girl cousins): "I had lunch at the Aloha Kitchen."
Grandson (who had spent the night and the day with his assertive three year-old brother): No response, ignoring the taunting with manly resolve.
Granddaughter, after a resonable passage of time: "What did you have for lunch?"
Grandson: No response, though clearly annoyed.
Granddaughter, not to be ignored: "What did you have for lunch? I went to the Aloha Kitchen and had saimin."
Grandson, giving in, while crossing his eyes in disgust: "I had a boring sandwich!''

Now the story of which I was reminded:

My mother grew up on the shores of Bear Lake which straddles the border of Utah and Idaho. This was an pleasant rural setting where the small local population struggled through a short growing season the sustain their lives. The settlement was not very old when my mother lived there as a girl, and everyone knew each other. Among the gathering places frequented by the locals was Jesse Cotter's General Store. Mother described the large cast-iron stove in the middle of the store which was the the only thing that could tear a child away from browsing the nooks and crannies of the store. Loitering in the store in the winter around the stove was a common thing to do.
Meantime the allure of fun on the shores of the Bear Lake brought "City Slickers" from Salt Lake City who would arrive and stay at the newly built Lakota resort. They brought with them the curious arrogance common those who live in large cities. One group of such young men dared to saunter into Jesse Cotter's General Store. Surveying the pitiful gathering around the stove, one young man asked Jesse about buying cigarettes, announcing disdainfully to the locals, "I smoke." Unimpressed and chaffing at the arrogance, one of the farmers spat on the cast iron stove and said, "So does a dog turd on a cold morning."

One always wants to have a snappy response to annoying arrogance. I always imagine being there that day when the smooth-faced, arrogant swell tells the hard-scrabble, scruffy farmers "I smoke." I want to see his face as he hears the "dog-turd" response. I want to hear all the locals laugh in appreciation. I also want to say that to all arrogant, insufferable people who taunt and annoy with their presumed superiority based on where they live, where they have been or where they ate lunch "So does a dog turd... "

I must tell this story to my grandson someday when he's older, and it's ok for him to hear words like "turd" though I must say that I did find the crossed-eyes and the "boring sandwich" response to be quite hilarious.

What I Learned on the Way to the Lego Store

Ever since I introduced him to the stand-alone Lego Store in the Mall, EJ has associated trips to that store with the Grandparents. First trip he had some Christmas money that was burning a hole in his pocket. That time I ended up subsidizing the purchase to the extent that he effectively has indentured servant status for the rest of his life, with him agreeing to work it off by performing various tasks for us. The item was so complex that it took many evenings with his father to put it together.
Next following a cash haul at his birthday, another trip to the Lego Store was mounted, this time with Grandpa. That purchase was also a rather complicated assembly project.
Then we innocently gave him the stash of loose change we had collected to help create a "Lego Fund". We took the coins to his house and helped him count them and were surprised to discover that there was over $30 - a good start to his "Lego Fund". Unfortunately, a six year old doesn't understand "Fund" economics. He is a proponent of the theory of instant gratification so commonly practiced these days. Thus began his constant pattern of telling us about what Lego he wanted to buy, asking when were we going take him to the store, reminding us we needed to take him, etc. So insistent and regular were his efforts that in the end we agreed to take him just to prevent the necessity of registering him as a Lego Lobbyist.
Lucy in the meantime had contributed to the fund so there was over $36 in coins. So after spending an hour at the bank putting the coins in wrappers and then exchanging them for bills, Grandpa and I took EJ and Lucy to the Mall. After two errand stops on the way, EJ asked, "Now are we going to the Lego Store?" I teasingly replied that I had decided that I needed a new shirt so perhaps we could use the money for that. He of course would have nothing of that, "Lego Store or Bust" was his mantra. Then I asked, "Would you give me the shirt off your back?" He thought for one nanosecond and proclaimed, "I don't love you THAT much!" (Emphasis on THAT). Immediately thinking about what he had just said, he clarified his position by saying, "But I do love my mother enough."
So what I learned on the way to the Lego Store was that if you have a qualifier, hyphens or adjectives associated with your name/position, love is not unconditional. It also started me wondering about those to whom I would say, "I don't love you THAT much!" for whatever reason. Like with whom would you share a spoon or a toothbrush? (Sorry, Mike, spoon yes, toothbrush: "I don't love you THAT much!")
What about you? To whom would you say, "I don't love you THAT much!" and for what reasons.

Kids say the Darndest Things

"Girls make milk and boys make fertilizer." EJ's matter-of-fact demeanor belied my confused stare at him as I tried to understand what I thought he had just said. He was sitting between his brother and sister at the counter munching on his lunch and talking to me through the cacophony of short-order request on all sides, so I wasn't sure I heard him correctly. I understood the "girls make..." part, but was unsure of what it was "boys" make. He calmly repeated his observation over again until both his mother and I understood what he had said. Now the only thing left to understand was what he had meant.
I decided that he was making a joke of some smelly little boy variety and asked whether he had been camping lately thinking exposure to Boy Scout-type jokes was the origin of the observation. Hal piped up and said he had been camping. EJ just looked confused. Now it was his turn to wonder what I meant by my camping comment.
Meantime "Girls make milk and boys make fertilizer" was still an amusing comment which I repeated to Grandpa when he came home. We both made the colon connection and shook our heads in the "Kids say the darndest things" way.
Later his mother told me she had figured out what he was trying to say. She had been teaching him "Birds and Bees" for the six year old, telling him that males fertilize the eggs. His mind reduced the info into milk/fertilizer comment.
I do now understand why he said what he said and still consider it amusing But I am worried that when his reading skills improve he will recognize the writing on the green Ortho box on the shelf in the garage and conclude that Grandma has "fertilizer" envy.

Famous Last Words

Our conversations are made more memorable and lively by the frequent use of quotes that have special meaning to us. For example if motoring down the road behind some challenged driver, one of us might say, "He is driving erotically." which would be followed by gales of laughter as we recalled that this quote is from sister #1 as she described the reason why the Highway Patrolman stopped sister #2 as she left Sardine Canyon and started into Cache Valley. We were confident that sister #2 was not driving topless but swerving due to fatigue. But the sister #1 is famous for her quote worthy malapropisms.
Of course we all have our own favorite quotes for which we have become famous. "Anything natural is not to be scorned." is one of my own quotes of which I am particularly proud. A family camp-out spawned my brother's famous "Let sleeping bags lie." in response to whether we should wake our Mother; and my husband's horrifying query re his young nephew's scrambled eggs covered with ketchup, "What is that, an abortion?" We also loved Cora's comment on my attempt to prepare her for Auntie's morning diabetes-testing ritual, "In our country we call that diarrhea." That left me speechless as in the "Joe vs the Volcano" favorite quote, "I have no response to that."
Actually TV and movies are a source of many of our favorite and oft-used quotes such as "I know you can get the job, but can you do the job. I'm not arguing that." also from "Joe vs the Volcano". And from "The Muppets take Manhattan": "Do you believe in inter- species dating?", Mr. Monk: "Suck it up, Sharona.", Ben Stein: "Bueller?", Obiwan Kanobi, "I feel a great disturbance in the Force." This last quote has also been used this way: "I felt no disturbance in the Force".
Children in the family have created a great legacy of memorable quotes, besides the aforementioned diarrhea-diabetes. I remember one Christmas Eve driving by the neighbor's celebration, with so many cars parked on either side of the street you could hardly get past. Darling daughter #1, age three at the time, said dryly, "Eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow you die." In answer to our astonished but amused inquiry as to where she had heard that, she replied, "Goofy said it." Also darling daughter #2 looking at her father's bald head asked him, "Did the birds eat your hair Daddy?"
Children are so innocent and spontaneous with their comments. Our young nephew who was watching Sesame Street ran excitedly to his mother and asked, "Got cello, like Yo-Yo Ma?" This quote caught our imagination as over the years we thought of the stimulating effect this performance had had on him. Despite his early interest in the cello, he went on to be a gifted pianist, composer and scholar. I use the past tense because this quote is now used "In Memoriam".
I felt a great disturbance in the force.
"We felt a great disturbance in the Force."

"Stuff"

One spends a lifetime accumulating stuff only to realize at some point that there is no more room. Parting with stuff becomes painful. But honestly do you really need belts hanging in your closet that no longer fit your maturing shape? How many pitchers are too many? Or pictures for that matter. There is a finite amount of shelf space and wall space after all. I decreed to my husband a few years ago that we could add no more books to our collection as we were out of space. We solved that dilemma when we bought eight more bookcases!
I live in a great fear that the stuff will take over my life like a growing alien invasive blob from a'50s Science Fiction movie. Also lurking in my subconscious, as I pass the bedrooms vacated by our children, is the horror I felt when reading Agatha Christie's description of living with her mother and grandmother who could not bear to part with any of their possessions so they had bedrooms remodeled into closets full of shelves and cupboards in which they could store their "stuff". Whole rooms became unusable repositories/museums to their past. Surely I haven't succumbed to this. After all there is still a usable bed in each room even though every inch of space under the beds is filled with memorabilia. And hey, I can still close the closet doors and shut out the shelves groaning with "Stuff".
I had vowed to never have my mother's drawer full of miscellaneous collections of things that were ultimately unusable because no one knew they were there. Growing up we had a whole kitchen cupboard that was referred to as the "Thing" because it was always covered by the flotsam and jetsam of life, e.g., "Where is my algebra book?" "It's on the 'Thing'. " or "I need my gloves." "Look on the 'Thing'."
But to be honest I admit that a recent kitchen remodel found me sorting through just such a drawer. "Why did I keep that?" or more often, "What is that?", I kept asking myself as I navigated through the drawer contents. But in the back of my mind like an annoying pop-up ad was that old thought handed down to me from my ancestors who lived through the depression: "You'll never know when you might need it." "No, no, no!" I scream, "Banish that thought. Freedom at last! I will throw it all in the garbage." Did anyone see me do that? I repent and retrieve it because it really is true that you never do know when you'll need it.
I hear my grandmother telling me, "Remember the time you threw that banana away and the next day you wanted to make banana bread..."

Defined by the past

Sometimes I have the feeling that I no longer belong in this world. Sadly the feeling began about a decade ago when I watched helplessly as the world began to plan to celebrate the arrival of the 21st Century. I had been anticipating this event for over 50 years since a grade school teacher told us that we would live to see a new Century. But amazingly in this era that considered itself enlightened - an era of satellites, computers, graphing calculators and the internet - simple mathematics had been abandoned and the new century would be celebrated not 100 years after the beginning of the 20th Century, but 99 years. Surely, I thought, someone would correct this error. How embarrassing this must be to go forward with plans for the world-wide extravaganzas a year early. But then I read that it was only purists of the "high culture" mentality that were calling for the celebrations in 2001, i.e.,don't bother us with the facts.
Admittedly I loved the worldwide Y2K celebrations in the various countries beginning in places like Fiji and New Zealand. Nevertheless, I still recalled the voice of my teacher, Mrs. Hendricks, explaining to us why we would celebrate in the 21st Century in 2001 and not 2000. It was then that I began to have the nagging feeling that a person such as myself did not belong in this new Century. My problem being that I have one foot firmly and permanently stuck in a past that among other things defined things differently and did not tolerate fuzzy math.