Three Billy Goats Gruff

I have insisted that each new baby in the family hear the same song as their first song. I sing The Unicorn to them. It is now tradition. 

I sing that song to them often. Of course there are lots of other songs too. Grandma cannot carry a tune but she sings at the drop of a hat.

My second grandson was walking through the room one afternoon. The radio began to play The Unicorn. My grandson got a shocked look on his face. He looked at me and saw I was not singing. With a puzzled look on his face he looked at the radio. Then he looked at me. Then he looked at the radio. Me again. Radio. Me.

 I know he was happy when the song was over.

I also love to tell stories and nursery rhymes.

For some reason I remember telling my second grandson Three Billy Goats Gruff when he first came home from the hospital. 

I told all the babies stories. I taught them nursery rhymes. I sang to them. All the things I did with my own children. Life is good.

By the way for anyone who would like to sing or tell stories to children they are available online. All of them.

Memory

My oldest son has an astounding memory. He remembers things from when he was a toddler.

Sometimes it can be a bit frightening. I will say, "You are too young to remember..." He always remembers.

Recently we were talking about the apartment we lived in when he and his first brother were born. He says he remembers the apartment. He also remembers the apartment my parents lived in when they first moved to Detroit.

Then he really shocked me. He had a memory of wandering around an apartment he did not know.

I had completely forgotten about that!

I did not know he knew how-to open the door so I had not locked it. I was tending to his new brother in the bedroom. 

He opened the door and went exploring.

When I went to the living room to check on him. There was no HIM there. I looked through the whole apartment. No him.

We lived on the third floor... no elevator. There were stairs at either end. What if someone had snatched him? What if he had gotten out and fell?

I rushed to the hall outside the apartments. No baby boy. I started to run toward the stairs at the back.

Suddenly I noticed an open apartment door that was open. I went over and knocked being ever so hopeful that they had rescued my baby.

There was my son wandering around. He did not touch anything. He just wanted to look.

No one else was there. He had tried the doorknob and it opened. 

I snatched him up and took him home. Of course I explained to him that he could not just go into someone's home without an invitation. 

As I said before I did not remember this until my son brought it up I was astounded. I had completely forgotten the whole thing.

And from that time I made sure the doors could not be opened by little hands.

Croak

One town I lived in our house was on the main street which was a part of the main highway, We were the last house on our side of the street. It was a great place to live.

My favorite place to be was at the very top of a huge tree. It stood at the corner of our driveway. It was quite tall. Years before someone had placed two boards across the very top which made it comfortable to sit there.

I spent a lot of time up there. It was a small town and I could watch the happenings downtown.

I could also watch the comings and goings of the boy next door. He was much older than I was and I knew I had no chance. He sure was pretty to look at.

We lived in a 2-story house. It even had running water in the kitchen. The cursed outhouse sat out back.

We were also on a 2-phone party line. The other phone belonged to the drugstore.

Like most of our neighbors we had a root cellar. It was like the one in The Wizard Of Oz that Dorothy could not follow her family in when the tornado came. People also stored things they had canned and apples and potatoes in there.

I love rainy weather. When we got a good heavy rain there the toads emerged from all the root cellars. There were thousands of them.

The road in front of the house was completely covered with the little critters. Each one was about 2 1/2 inches long. All of them making the highway look like ocean ripples.

Unfortunately it was the highway. Every now and then a car would drive by. All you heard was POP, POP, POP.

All those poor little toads exploded from the pressure of the car tires.

The next morning we went out to see the carnage. There was no evidence of popped toads anywhere.

Got any ideas where they went? I do not.

Timmy And The Hershey Bar

 My nephew was always getting into mischief. He was a good boy. He just had a lot of energy. As you know an energetic child needs to be busy. 

If he is not given something constrictive to do he will find something to do. And his something will probably get him in trouble.

Timmy was about 8 years old. He loved watching movies using the VCR

Timmy had a Hershey chocolate bar. Hershey bars are a flat piece of chocolate. The VCR tape is flat.

Why he put the bar into the machine we will probably never know. The chocolate melted everywhere.

My sister tried her best to clean it out. That VCR never worked right again.

Timmy is in his mid forties now. He does not remember why he did it. I think it was because it was there.

The Ly Situation

I have another complaint. Ly.

Two innocent little letters. They are so often misused.

My example is the word bad.

If you feel bad you might be ill. Feel better soon.

If you feel badly you are not doing a good job. Think about it for a second. If you are holding a baby badly you might drop it. If you are bad at holding the baby have someone show you how. (Or you might drop it.)

To explain better bad is an adjective used to describe a thing. Badly is an adverb which describes an action.

I hope I was clear enough. We all need to speak more correctly.

The Movie

I am embarrassingly emotional at times. Just ask my children. 

I am not a fan of science fiction movies. I do not care about the doo-hicky that they invented that can transport people to somewhere else. I am not interested in all that mechanical stuff.

So when the first Star Wars movie came out my mother kept telling me that I should take my kids to see it. I was not interested. Who cares about life in the future in outer space?

Mom gave us each a ticket to see Star Wars as a Christmas gift. I was not thrilled. However I did take all four of my children to see the movie. 

I loved it! We actually went to see it several times.

It was such a popular movie that they began making the sequel and its sequel immediately. And of course we saw them as soon as they were available.

In the movies Luke Skywalker was the hero. He had been raised by his aunt and uncle. Darth Vader was the bad guy. 

Through three movies Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader were trying to eliminate each other. Even after they discovered they were father and son.

Needless to say there were many MANY battles between them. 

In the third movie Darth Vader was killed... not by his son. They had a touching reunion before he expired.

In my family we each have a favorite place to sit in the theater, I sit a little bit ahead of the very middle of the seats. Each child has a favorite place and I know where they are.

It was such a loving scene between Luke and Darth when the father dies that I began to cry.

Soon I hear my youngest son who sat more toward the back and the left call in a loud whisper to his brother sitting more toward the front and to the right. "Hey! Look at Mom. She's crying because Darth Vader died." Not all the snickers came from my children.

But wait. There's more.

After the movie we went to the ethnic festival. It was being held beside the Detroit River in downtown Detroit.

As we walked along my adorable son would greet people saying, "That's my mom. She cried because Darth Vader got killed."

Isn't he cute???????

Do Not Be Afraid To Ask

I received a bill from the hospital after my baby was born. As I do with all bills I read it carefully.

I do not know medical billing but I did find something that puzzled me. There was a tray with a number that was charged twice. 

I had no idea what it was so I called the hospital and asked. The woman was very nice while letting me know that I was interfering with her day.

She looked in her list of medical terms. Then she looked at her copy of my bill. 

Tray number whatever was for performing a circumcision. They were charging me twice for my son's circumcision.

She very kindly took it from the bill.

If I had been afraid to ask I would have been overcharged.

A good thing to remember is that if you ask you will get one of two responses. In the case above the response was positive. I saved some money.

If the response had been negative the charge would have stayed on the bill. and I would have paid it. I would only have lost some time.

If you have a question always ask. You never know which answer will come but it is better than not knowing.

IT IS A GOOD DAY TO DIE

My son liked to watch Star Trek. All of them.

The second incarnation was Star Trek: The Next Generation. It introduced a character named Worf.

Worf is a Klingon. Klingons live for battle. When barging into war a Klingon screams IT IS A GOOD DAY TO DIE. It is a way of saying that if the warrior is brave in battle there is no more honorable way to die.

My son has an affinity for gadgets. He had one of the first home computers. He was on the internet as soon as it was available to him.

He kept telling me about all the interesting things he was doing. I really was not interested at all.

Finally one day he talked me into looking at it. He found a site I was willing to look at. I read it and learned a few things. Soon I was on the computer often reading that site.

Then I discovered these things called links. If I clicked on a link it would take me to a different site. Wow. I could find stuff. I would sit and click away. 

I found some things I liked. I found some things I did not like. I found some things that embarrassed me. I still clicked away.

Until... one day I clicked on a link. What appeared was a totally black page that somehow had a red tint to it. I was puzzled.

Then a loud deep voice told me IT IS A GOOD DAY TO DIE!

I ran to get my son. I was terrified. I thought somehow I had clicked onto a curse of some sort.

My son just laughed at me. He explained that he had installed Worf's voice to sound if the computer crashed.

It's not funny!