“Ride-It Erector,” a classic toy I discovered in my storage closet, manufactured in 1959. Tell me something. Which were the people of the ‘50s lacking: sex or imagination?
And no one thought of this sixty years ago?
Said Eva
Much annoyed, after catching a glimpse of Anna through her magnifying glass: “Anna! You’re not a clue!”
Eva: “Mama, I want to go to the ocean.”
Me: “Someday.”
Eva: “But today IS someday!”
Terrified, running full speed away from her brother: “Mama! Tyler’s being a freaky monster!”
Eva: (pointing at the hot tub, which is next to the pool): “Mama, can we go in there?”
Me: “No. The sign says you have to be fourteen to go in the hot tub.”
Eva (pointing at old man): “Well, HE’s in here, and HE’s not fourteen!”
Eva (pointing at an illustration in the book we were reading): “Mama, who’s that?”
Me: “That’s the royal wiseman. And he’s holding a crystal ball.”
Eva: “Oooooh! Can he bounce it?”
After the Bean licked her head: “Mama! Bean licked the side of my brain!”
“Mama, when I’m five I’ll be bigger. But I don’t want you to cry, cause you’ll hurt my ears. You can just say, ‘Wow! You’re five?!’”
Angrily, after Anna made it to the end of the pool first: “Anna! Don’t ever win again!”
Me (singing to her when she went underwater in the pool): “For she’s a jolly good fellow…”
Eva (after listening to the song from beginning to end): “Mama, what is that about?”
Me: “It’s a song people sing when somebody does something great. And you just did something really, really great!”
Eva (after a thoughtful pause): “I want to hear that Jello song again!”
Repositioning Anna on the toilet: “Anna! You’re not sitting on the hole!”
After Anna fell off the couch: “Anna, see what happens when you do scary things?”
After Tyler climbed on the counter to get her Minnie Mouse: “Tyler, you did it! You’re a hero!”
When I didn’t hug or kiss her as much as usual after tucking her in: “Mama! You forgot to love me!”
Angrily, after Anna sneezed on her leg: “Mama! Anna just bless you’d all over me!”
Which do you see…
…girl wrapped around her daddy’s neck, or Daddy wrapped around his girl’s finger?
Long live the myth
A friend recently reminded me that Pluto was demoted to a “dwarf planet,” and it pissed me off all over again. Not because I have a particular loyal toward the ex-member of our solar system. I simply find it irritating how they can tell us one thing all through school, then just up and change their minds. And so, I’m taking a stand: astronomers may have a fancy new set of guidelines, but as for me, I’m not letting go of our ninth planet so easily.
I propose that some guy with a rocket, a dream, and a scanty map of the solar system make a voyage out to Pluto, despite all popular belief that Pluto is a dwarf. He can bump into it by accident, fight off the savage Plutians, stake his claim and get his own national holiday.
A bunch of us can follow him there and repopulate, make our Plutian children recite some cheesy song to help them remember the guy’s name and the year 2012, teach them about the Native Plutians during multicultural week at school, then ultimately go back and reteach them that the brave and valiant explorer from Planet Earth was really an orchestrator of mass murderer and genocide.
If you’ll excuse me, I’d like to go back to the days when life was simpler, back when Columbus was still a hero, Pluto still had dignity, Einstein was flunking math, Isaac Newton was getting clonked in the head with apples, Washington was chopping down cherry trees, and Ben Franklin was out flying kites and keys in the middle of electrical storms.
Long live the myth, ignorance and bliss, the American dream, and always last (but never least), Planet Pluto.