Kids are where it’s at!

-Fred Stock

Reflecting on our younger days when our boys were little tykes, I realize that I didn’t spend enough quality time with them. This should have been a time when I was able to give them what they needed from a parent, but also a time when they would have given to me, something I now realize I needed. I watch the grandchildren with pride and delight. I tease and play with the neighbor’s little ones as they hop and skip about and it softens our adult world. We sit in our chairs on Saturday morning, waiting for the first cup of coffee to obliterate that s lee py-sand in our eyes, and we hear the voices of the urchins next door playing. I look at Barbara and she has a broad beaming smile, and I notice I have developed one too! They are great!

Our neighbor has some relatives staying with them for a few days and the older boy, perhaps 11, is running with the younger ones. I asked the little middle girl Peyton, “Is that your cousin?”  She thought for a second and replied, “He’s my brother’s cousin.,” as she hopped and skipped away! Oh, OK! Hmmmm!

It brought back a moment when the four boys we had were just little squiggles, and we were living in Lakewood , CA. I had just resigned a job and was going to the next one in a week. It was Christmas week, and we were moving to Palm Desert , so a Christmas tree was not in the plans for L.A. County . Well, it wasn’t in OUR plans; the kids had a different idea. They were in the play area near a business, and adjacent to the fence was a box-car full of pine trees being unloaded for a nearby lot. The kids pressed their noses to the fence, looking their best “poor and homeless” illusion and told the men, “Our dad is out of work and we probably won’t have a Christmas tree at all this year.” When Mom came out of the store, there was a Christmas tree atop the station-wagon!

Little ones see things differently, don’t they? Our Grandson Joey used to spend hours with “action figures” of the WWF wrestlers he saw on TV. He’d have them biffing each other and growling the way the actors did on the tube. We were in the next room when he was playing, and heard him narrating the voices of the two “wrestlers” fighting each other in his hands. “Take that, you!” Slap! “Hey, you can’t do that to me!” Slam! “Yes I can” Whump! “No you can’t!” Grunt! “Oh yah? Why not?” “Mama says!” “Oh, OK!”

I noticed an ad for a product that is supposed to make you feel twenty years younger. I took it, double dose. I took my vitamins that promise to make me feel and look younger. I do my exercises that “take years off your life!” I’ve been getting so young I don’t think I can finish this article for a few more years! Sorry!  -fhs