Encounters With Children

One
A beautiful little girl with long blond pigtails, dressed in a Dorothy costume complete with ruby slippers, stood next to me in the bead store. She was accompanied by her mother and her adorable baby sister, who was riding in a stroller.

While her mother browsed, she took strings of shiny colorful beads and held them up to the baby, who was tucking her chin and drooling, trying to get them in her mouth.

“Look at these, Mommy!” Dorothy said. “The baby needs these.”

“Um hmm,” said her mother.

“She does!” she insisted. “Babies love to be stylish.”


Two
Maggie, my daughter, babysits brothers who are seven and five. One day they were arguing and hitting each other, so she separated them and suggested they draw a picture of how angry they were.

The oldest boy drew himself striking his brother, with big black scrawls all around.

“Wow, you are mad!” Mags commented. “Now can you draw what you could do next?” The boy drew himself and his brother having a conversation, then shaking hands.

“That’s great!” Maggie encouraged. “Now let’s do something else and let all of the bad feelings go.”

A minute later she noticed the older boy hadn’t come back to play; he was still drawing. She went to admire the final picture. He’d drawn his brother in a castle, without a window or door. And the castle was burning.

Takes a while for all those bad feelings to be gone.


Three
We were walking the dogs at the park, and a little boy named Roman stopped to pet them. Roman, who had just turned three, was wearing pale orange nail polish, just like his older sister. (“He wanted to paint them for his birthday party,” his father explained.)

Roman stroked our little dogs gently. “They’re soft,” he said.

Then he said, “Their tails come off.”

Well, no, Roman. Really, they don’t.

I Do It Myself

I carved the Halloween pumpkins by myself this year. It was fun. I freehanded the faces, did a cursory job of clearing out the gooey interiors, and had a few beauties completed in a half-hour.

Although I have great memories of carving bright orange faces with my kids, this year had its advantages. Nobody complained that there were stringy squishy pieces hanging down behind the eye holes, no one was upset that his brother got one more crooked tooth in his pumpkin's mouth than he did, and no one insisted that we clean and roast every single seed.

Still, I do miss moments like this:



Happy Halloween!

Signs of Fall

This time of year may be my favorite. The air is crisp and there are so many lovely things to see.

Pumpkins and mums,



Leaves changing color,





And bright berries.



And then there are these signs of the autumn season. Don't they just say October to you?









And they're everywhere you look!



Gaaaaaaaaa.

Verifying Me

So I just posted a comment on a friend's luscious blog entry (www.ofsofterearth.blogspot.com), and as always I had to type in a nonsense word before my comment would be posted. I have two things to say about that:

First, my word today was "calserne." I like the sound of this word and have spent more time than you would think wondering what a calserne might be. Any ideas?

Second, because the sites always show the code word in some sort of scriggly typeface, the "r" and the "n" were hard to distinguish from one another. I had to guess what the letters were before entering the word. I got it right but, Google verification people, "calserne" is not the ideal choice for this sort of thing.

And third (oops, that's three things) why do we have to do this anyway? If anyone were using my account to post a counterfeit comment, presumably that person could type in "calserne" as well as I could.

Now I'm sure there are many highly technical and cool people out there who can tell me what the purpose of these goofy words is. Because the word "calserne" is so diverting, I didn't mind typing it. But can someone explain to me what's up with this?

Heavy Metal Typo

I'm proofreading something that refers to the 1st Armor Division of the U.S. Army, instead of the 1st Armored Division.

The 1st Armored Division is a more than half-century old fighting unit of soldiers known as "Old Ironsides." And the first Armor Division would be what? Knights on horseback? Those suits of armor that come alive and clunk around Hogwarts in the Harry Potter movies? It's kind of a cool image.

But it's stlll a funny typo.