inspired
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Cock Fruit-tail
Note: I originally wrote this in 2000. My kids are now 9 and 13, but they still say some funny things. A couple years ago, we were driving to town. Emma, then 7, innocently asked, "Why did we just pass a sign that says Do Not Pass?" Ellie and I howled! I patiently explained to Emma what that sign meant, though, and she saw the humor in it, too. Last week, we went to town, and Emma repeated her question to remind us of the laughs we got the first time. We cracked up again. It's one of those stories that will be told over and over. I hope this essay inspires you to listen to what kids say. Write it down, even if it's not your kids. The innocence and fun that is children is very inspiring. That's an essay in itself. A friend of mine went into a preschool, listened and wrote. His notes became a book on sustainability, of which I have a rough draft. His name is Stefan Pasti, and the preschool was/is in Durham, NH. Here is some kid stuff from Stefan's book: "Pretend you thought I was real." "I live in a different Maine than you do." "I've been coloring for 200 weeks." "The boys make everything they color black... Everything in the whole wide world is not black." "That's the mother of every pony."
My original essay follows. * Lately my six year old has been "saying the darnedest things", bringing me back to when both girls were younger, learning to talk, and making a lot of mistakes. I can't help but share with you, because some of this stuff is really funny. It will also remind you of your own kids' bloopers and philosophies. What started me on this was something Emma said about a month ago. She woke up in my bed, and looked out the window which is high in the wall. With her slurred sleepy speech, she observed, "The blue sky is rising, the gray sky is going." Wow - how poetic! Just a few days ago she woke up in my bed again. In her early morning reflection, she referred to "god." I asked, "Don't you mean 'goddess'?" She said, "No, only Santa Claus has cousins, not god." I don't know what this means, but we live in a community where everyone is everyone else's cousin. One day last week, we were on the front porch eating ice cream. It was hot and sunny. She noticed that it melted faster if her plate was in the sun. She pulled her plate into the shade, and further shielded it with her arms. "I wish there was a switch to turn the sun off and on." I suggested we go inside. "No, there needs to be a switch, so I can turn the sun off and eat ice cream outside. Then I'll turn it back on when I'm done." So there. Emma was suddenly getting a lot of attention around these stories as I repeated them to my friends over and over. I was afraid Ellie, the ten year old, would feel left out, so I began to recall funny things she said when she was younger. When she was the only child, I had time to write them all down. Some day I'll go through my old journals and get them, but for now, these are off the top of my head. They'll be part of the perennial stories - you know, the ones told every time the family gets together. When Ellie was 2, she couldn't say "L" so she called herself Eddy. She had long-ish, scraggly hair and tomboy energy, and often wore only shorts and no shoes. When other kids asked her her name, she'd say, "Eddy", and the little boys would start rough-housing with her, thinking she was a boy. Glad to say, she held her own. Because she couldn't say "L", yellow was "yodie". For years. Actually, we still say that. Here's some more of Ellie's 2 year old vocabulary: elephant -- el-fin-it And finally, what you've all been wondering... fruit cocktail -- cock fruit-tail She said that as naturally as I say my own name. The fun thing about all these "words" is that we still use them. We go Fristum shopping in December. We put Fristum ornitsum on the tree. There are elfinits and hitopotosum at the zoo. We eat noonies (and skebbies) quite often, but we haven't seen Frtz in a while. And while we eat a lot of fresh fruit, now and then I buy cock fruit-tail. Boy, my spell checker must have a headache!
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