Category Archives: These People Crack Me Up

Books, Family Adventures, These People Crack Me Up

Book-Banning, Beanie & Rose Style

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Yesterday I asked Jane to run upstairs to my room and get a book off my bedside table. "It’s called As I Lay Dying," I said.

Rose let out a shriek. "Nooooo! No!"

"What’s wrong?" I asked. "You don’t want Jane to get it? Did you want to?"

"NO, Mommy! I don’t want you to read that book at ALL! That’s a terrible book!"

"Oh, honey, it’s a beautiful book, really," I reassured her. "Does the title scare you?"

Rose glowered. Fear makes her fierce. "I. Don’t. Like. It."

By this time, Jane had returned with my book. Beanie rushed to my side and studied the cover, which shows (not surprisingly) a drawing of a coffin in the back of a wagon.

"Mommy!" Bean shrieked. "Don’t read this! I don’t want you to lay dying!"

"Sweetheart," I said, wondering where all the melodrama was coming from, and then remembering that they’re my children. "This book doesn’t have anything to do with me. I’m just reading it."

"Well, I don’t like it."

I pointed out that reading How to Eat Fried Worms didn’t make Rose actually EAT any worms, fried or otherwise.

"I would NEVER!" Rose shuddered.

Beanie considered this a moment.

"I wish you would," she said, forgetting all about my nightmarish taste in literature. "It would be very interesting to watch."

Family Adventures, These People Crack Me Up

The Slippery Staircase of Life

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This, I am told, is the name of the game Beanie and Rose were playing when I came out of my room a little while ago. They were crouched on the top stair with big Cheshire cat grins. Which, it turned out, were appropriate to the game: they were cats.

"The landing where the stairs turn is the end of childhood, see," Rose explained to me. "And once you’re below that, the stairs get EVEN SLIPPERIER and if you aren’t careful you slide all the way down to the bottom and then you’re DEAD."

"If you’re a cat," Bean chimed in.

Rose nodded. "Right, if you’re a cat."

What I want to know is, how do they already know the part about things speeding up once you make that left turn out of childhood? Because that bit doesn’t just apply to cats.

Family Adventures, These People Crack Me Up

I Have Told This Story Before

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But it’s one of my favorites. Beanie’s current Beatrix Potter kick brought it to mind yesterday.

When Rose was two-going-on-three, our beloved Alice gave us a "Bunny Bowling Set." The bowling balls were little plastic cabbages with which you attempted to knock down plastic rabbit-shaped pins. Jane set the game up and played it for a while, then wandered off. I was in the next room, fixing dinner, and heard Rose playing with the game. But she sounded frustrated. I kept hearing her knock the bunnies over with the ball, and then she’d cry out in dismay.

Finally she hollered, "Mommy! It no WORK!"

I went to watch her try again. She rolled the cabbage and knocked down half the bunnies. I cheered.

"There you go! You’ve got the hang of it now."

She looked at me incredulously. "No! It no work," she said, through gritted teeth.

"Sure it worked!" I said. "Look how many bunnies you hit."

Her glare was steely with pity and forced patience. "It—no—work," she repeated, slowly, as if she were the adult and I the child. "Bunny won’t catch cabbage!"

These People Crack Me Up

Oh, But There’s More

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"So, Bean," I ask, "what would you like for your birthday lunch and dinner?"

Her eyes light up. This is a family tradition; the birthday girl or boy gets to choose the day’s menu. She ponders.

"For lunch, French toast!" she announces, fairly crackling with joy. Then her expression shifts: now she is virtuous. "And for dinner, a good meal. You know, something you make that I won’t eat much of."