Tell me another story

“Tell me another story,” Little Legs said.

Grandpa yawned in a way that could have been mistaken for a growl.

“Ok, just one more,” Grandpa agreed, “And that’s it.”

Little Legs laughed, neither agreeing nor disagreeing to the terms.

“When I was a little boy, my brother and I were playing in the woods,” he began.

“Like me and Baby Brother,” Little Legs interjected.

Grandpa nodded, “Yes, just like you and your brother.”

“We were playing when we noticed that we weren’t alone. Something white was watching us from a pile of leaves. It twitched its nose and sniffed at the ground to see if we smelled safe.”

“Like this?” Little Legs wiggled his nose back and forth.

“Just like that,” he continued with a nod.

“At first, we thought it was a rat and then we decided it was a new type of cat. The woods-cat had shiny black eyes and a pink nose and sharp, white teeth. We noticed the teeth right away because it hissed at us.”

“Like this?” Little Legs gave his best hiss as observed from his temperamental cat at home.

“Exactly,” Grandpa said.

“We thought maybe the woods-cat was hungry, so we pooled our snacks together and found we had a piece of cheese, two carrot sticks, three pieces of celery and a handful of crackers.”

“You had cheese in your pocket?” Little Legs asked. “Do you have any cheese now?”

“Do you want to hear this story or not?” Grandpa asked.

Little Legs nodded and snuggled down with his pillow, ready to listen.

“We broke off pieces of carrot and tossed it to the cat and that’s when we saw it didn’t have paws, it had fingers. Well, we were mighty curious about this critter and decided to bring it home with us. Slowly but surely, we brought her along, every few steps throwing a piece of celery or a carrot to keep her right behind us. By the time we could see the front porch, that little critter was practically at our heels.

My brother ran ahead and opened the door and I pulled out the last cracker to get the woods-cat up the steps when your great-granny, my momma, ran out.

She screamed with a broom in her hands, “Watch out, there’s a possum behind you.”

She was ready to go to battle for us with the creature from the woods.

I said, ‘Don’t worry, Momma, that’s not a possum. It’s our pet.’ And we brought it right inside.”  

Little Legs blinked hard, fighting sleep, and said, “What’s a possum? One more story?”

“It was our pet. That’s it, now go to bed.”

Grandpa flicked off the light with a snap like the closing of a heavy book and walked into the living room.

“Did you really have a pet possum? And Granny let it inside? How long did you have it? What did Grandpa have to say about it?” I asked, wondering how much more I didn’t know about this man.

Grandpa laughed, “No dummy, it’s just a story.”

“Ok, how about one more,” I picked up where Little Legs left off.

“Please?”

Sweet Bee

The tribe of three marched through the woods, crunching leaves underfoot, hitting trees with sticks and reuniting acorns with their tops or “fingerhats.”

It would be hard to not hear the group, even though Little Legs periodically turned around with a finger held up to his lips.

“Shhhh….” He hushed his brother and mother who walked silently behind him, “deer might be sleeping.”

The trio emerged from the trees with bits of leaves in their hair and burrs on their pants, but otherwise unscathed from the potentially dangerous trip into Nature.

Of note, everything feels dangerous to the anxious/neurotic parent: grocery stores, backyards, stairs, uncut grapes and hotdogs, the list goes on and on.

“Let’s take a break here,” Mama said.

There was a flat rock wide enough for three behinds to rest on it, although, she knew that the chance of three behinds resting there for longer than a minute was slim to none.

Little Legs squatted down to draw on the rock with his hitting stick. Mama stretched out her legs and began the laborious process of picking burrs from her pants. Baby Brother dug into a pile of leaves, pushing the debris to the side as he went deeper towards the earth. He was a natural digger with strong hands and a need to make holes, he was in his element.

“Baa…baa…” he exclaimed in a higher pitch that made his mother take notice.

“What did you find?” Mama asked.

Baby Brother held his finger out and smiled at the buzzing yellow jacket that he had beefriended.

The social wasp buzzed comfortably on the end of the boy’s finger, exchanging curious looks and bee to boy, boy to bee noises.

Mama, who did not understand their language, screamed and reacted with a quick and well-placed flick, sending his friend backwards into the air and into oblivion, for all she cared.

“Bee,” Baby Brother exclaimed proudly, unaware of his brush with danger.

He stared at the empty end of his finger/bee-launch pad and then at his mother, in disbeelief, that his striped friend was suddenly missing.

“Easy come, easy go, Sweet Bee Boy,” Mama said with a twinge of regret at the interrupted friendship that was quickly replaced with a much greater sense of relief at not dealing with the pain and swelling of a sting.

Cowboy Dentist

Little Legs watched Minnie Mouse on the screen on the wall, while reclined on a green, plastic covered chair with a paper towel clipped to his shirt.  He was quite pleased with the situation. He had just eaten all the pink, cake flavored toothpaste from the dental hygienist’s silver toothpaste nub and was watching cartoons before noon.

Life was pretty good.

I corralled Baby Brother in the corner and watched the patient revel in his excellent fortune. He smacked his lips and turned around in search of more toothpaste.  

“Ok, Doctor Too Tall is going to take a quick peek in your mouth,” the hygienist explained.

“Where is Doctor X?” I asked.

“She got a job offer that she couldn’t refuse,” she whispered.  

“Howdy, partner,” Doctor Too Tall (and loud) swaggered into the cubical.

The cowboy-dentist wore jeans with a crease down the center of each leg, white from being re-ironed after every wash. I imagined he was the kind of man who also insisted that his underwear was ironed, folded, and shelved, instead of tossed into a pile and shoved into a drawer.

Doctor Too Tall leaned down and pulled Little Legs’ mouth out to one side. He poked at his teeth with a shiny, mirrored instrument until Little Legs clamped his jaws shut with a “humph” of finality. As far as Little Legs was concerned, the peek-show was over.

“How do his back teeth look, Doc?” I asked, distracting Baby Brother with a sample toothbrush.

On a nightly basis, we wrangled with the boy to brush his teeth. It was logical that a few were missed in the wrestling match, especially the hard-to-reach ones. Out of sight, out of mind.  

“Well, it is hard to tell which is why he should be with a pediatric dentist.”

I felt like the words were knocked out of my mouth, I was temporarily speechless.

“We like coming here because its only a few minutes from our house,” I ventured weakly, trying to make peace.

 “And that’s the difference between doing the easy thing and the right thing.”

With that, he breezed out.

Not another word was mentioned.

He was off to rope a horse and some bedside manner.