Isobel: "Daddy?"
Daddy: "Yes my petulant petunia?"
Isobel: "Daddy if you picked my nose..."
Daddy: "Wait, what?"
Isobel: "If you were picking my nose..."
Daddy: "No."
Isobel: "Wait, what?"
Daddy: "No."
Isobel: "What do you mean no?"
Daddy: "I mean no. I don't pick noses, that was your Mother's deal."
Isobel: "What do you mean?"
Daddy: "When you were a baby, your Mother picked your nose. Seemed liked every time she fed you, she was up there digging around."
Isobel: "Seriously?"
Daddy: "Seriously."
Isobel: "What kind of monster is she?"
I was early picking her up from school and she came bounding down the hallway when she saw me and jumped up to give me a big hug.
"You're early," she said. "did you have to wait in the office before I came?"
"No I just walked down the hallway toward your class," I replied. "I think pretty much everybody at the school knows me. There's no stranger danger here."
And it occurred to me that I have never had kind of talk with her, the kind of talk where I try to drill into her tiny little psyche, all of the information that will keep her safe from the predators that all parents think are lurking around every corner...and sometimes they come out from around those corners. Anyway, I asked her what she knew about how to behave around people she didn't know.
"Well," she began. "My teacher said that I should stay away from the ice cream truck unless a parent or other adult is watching me."
"That's probably a good idea..." I started. "Wait, what? she said you should stay away from the ice cream truck?"
"Yeah." said Isobel "She said that sometimes people who work in ice cream trucks are bad and they like to take kids away."
"I think your teacher has seen Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang too many times." I said half to myself.
"What?" Izzy asked.
"...or read too much Stephen King." I muttered some more.
"What?" Izzy asked again.
"Skip it, Pick." I said. "Be too hard to explain anyway.
But I didn't want to drop the subject so we continued our conversation.
"But you know not to talk to strangers, right? Like if someone you don't know, comes up and tries to talk to you, you know to not talk to them?"
"Yep." she said nonchalantly.
"And you know to tell an adult right away?"
"Yep."
"Even if they say they know Mummy or me, you don't talk to them or go with them or anything like that, right?"
"Daddy, they teach us this in school." she tried to reassure me
"I know Pick, I just want to make sure you understand." I said.
We drove to the hardware store in silence and I think she might have thought I was upset with her, she had an odd look on her face.
"Daddy?"
"Yes Isobel?"
"Daddy, do you think I should spit on a stranger if they come near me? I think I should do something like that to keep strangers away from me."
"I don't know if spitting on a stranger would keep them away from you or not."
"I know, I just said that." she said. "What I really meant was puke. I would puke on a stranger if they ever came near me.""Well, that might just keep them away from you." I said, realizing my point was now long gone. Awash in a sea of mental vomit.
"I can't wait to throw up on a stranger, I've never thrown up on anybody before."
"Well," I began. "That's not exactly true is it?"
"What do you mean?" she asked.
"You threw up in my mouth."
"Oh yeah." she said. "OK, from now on I only throw up on strangers."
Something tells me she's going to be pretty safe.
So the kids participated in 'Jump Rope for Heart' a fundraiser type thingy at the school. They bring home catalogues full of all of the things they can win. The extravagance of the prizes is directly proportional to the amount of money they can leech out of their parents. Grandparents and co-workers are the usual go to folks for this kind of thing. You know what I'm talking about, we are not the only family infected with the fundraising Ebola.
So both kids managed to get $100.00 in pledges thanks to generous friends and very kind aunties and grandparents and managed to jump rope about six times combined. (OK, that last bit isn't even close to the truth. Isobel had a headache from all the jumping and The Boy was walking with touch of a limp,the next day due to exceptionally sore legs)
For their trouble they got mostly crap. Light up Frisbees and light up balls. Stuff that look like the Heart and Stroke foundation did a lot of shopping at the dollar store... ho-ho! But all is not lost true believers!
The last thing to come out of their prize packs was an inflatable bouncy ball with a handle. Like the kind I remember wanting desperately as a kid but never actually getting. They have thrashed each other a few times and had a couple of ear splitting bounce offs. So they CAN find fun in the mundane. Well, time to get rid of the PlayStation...
Isobel has found a new use for the bouncy ball. She will hold the handle between her knees with the ball part on the other side of her...like a big red butt.
"Look at my big red butt." she said. "It's giant. I've never seen such a big red butt."
And then it was on. There was no more bouncing, ( OK, there was a little bouncing) there was only revelling in the majesty that is the big red butt.
"Excuse me," she started. "are you looking at my big red butt?"
"No, I am not." I said.
"It's not my fault that I have such a big red but and I am sensitive about it, you know."
She started to try and walk with it and was, of course, bouncing into tables and rattling anything within a foot of her big red butt.
"Hey, just be careful that you don 't break something with your silliness...and your big red butt." I barked.
"OK, maybe my red butt is a little too big for that." she said.Soon it was bed time and she stopped on her way up the stairs.
"Where are you going?" I asked.
"I forgot something." she said.
"What?" I asked.
She came back a minute later with a little note book I had given her sometime ago.
"I forgot my blog book." she said.
"Your what?" I asked.
"When something funny happens to me, I write it down in this book." she said. "And my big red butt is funny, funny stuff."
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