| Weekend Assignment #155: Recount a distinctively childish thing you did (or your children did) when you or they were children. Because things like painting your hands pink, or trying to make chocolate milk with mud, or arranging a marriage between your stuffed animals? Not something you're likely to do when you're older. |
Dear John,
Howdy friend, from the frozen freaking North Country. Where, today, we are having a heat wave – it's currently 37°F after a week of subzero highs with gale force winds and wind chills in the -20's and -30's. Where the low temp the other morning was -16°F – not Alaska cold, but cold enough for this old phartoid.
All things considered, I bring this level of misery upon myself. I could have abandoned hearth and home for Louisiana back in November, but no, not this dumbkopf. I have to stay right through the bitter end of winter in one of the more forsaken locales in the lower forty-eight. Why? Just plain stupid, I guess. This petulance? Just plain childish, I guess.
Speaking of childish, my grandfather Will used to run a furniture and dry goods store and out front, he had one of those new fangled hand pumps to gas up the horseless carriages. It was 1919 and my six year old father loved to tag along with his dad. On this particular day, he was glued to his Pop's side as the local doctor, Asa Adams, was fueling up his Model T. They were deep in conversation, to the point where Grampa had stopped pumping long enough to make a point to Asa. Neither was paying any attention to my father. Grampa was wearing bib overalls, so the story goes, so my dad took the nozzle out of the car and put it in his father's pocket. Grampa finished his discourse and started in pumping the handle again – only to discover he was fueling his nether regions! Of a sudden, he was hopping up and down and cursing to beat the band ... my father was seen beating feet down the alley to the rear of the building.
When cornered later, my dad's sole excuse was he wanted to do everything “just like Daddy.” Instead of owing my Grampa for gas, Gramps owed the good doctor a dollar for the salve to treat the chemical burns on his thigh, penis and scrotum.
Gives a whole new meaning to “childish” doesn't it?
As always, my best to your lovely wife and prodigious progeny. Keep them warm and happy and may you avoid any repeats of “just like Daddy” that get you where the sun don't shine!
wil
P.S. Extra Credit: His name was “Spots” and he was a very small, plush dog I received when I had chicken pox. He mysteriously disappeared after I recovered from same – my mother swore she didn't know what had happened to him. I looked high and low but no trace was ever found ... the second of many hallucinations to come.
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