So I’m house-sitting and pet-sitting for my brother and sister-and-law. Yesterday afternoon, after taking care of the dog (who’s scared of everything) and the cat (who probably doesn’t care if I live or die), I head out the door of the apartment to go to my own place to get my mail.
On the way to the parking lot, I encounter a little boy of about five years old, hanging out near the front door of an apartment that I assume is his residence. He practically comes running up to me and says something. I couldn’t hear him well because of the busy road nearby, so I kneel down, explain that I didn’t hear him, and ask him what he just said.
“I wanted to tell you that my mom says I’m not supposed to talk to strangers.”
I was about to go into smart-ass mode and tell the kid that he just broke his mommy’s rule and that he’ll get in trouble, but I thought better of it. Trying to keep from laughing, I told him that his mother was right, and that he should remember it. I also told him that he doesn’t need to tell that to every stranger he meets.
“Um, okay.”
On the way home, I couldn’t help thinking how bizarre that situation was. I know kids that age are prone to misinterpreting things sometimes, and sometimes say some very peculiar things. They don’t realize it’s peculiar, and therefore can’t figure out why the grown-ups are laughing so hard.
What about the rest of the Teeming Millions? Anyone else have a similar story to tell?
This is a true story that Art Linkletter never could have used.
When my baby sister was about 4 years old, her favorite candy was Horlick’s Malted Milk Tablets. One day my cousin’s wife from way down South was visiting with my mom, and she brought her son Tony who was about 3 years old. They were just sitting at the kitchen table over coffee. Then my little sister runs in exclaiming, “Mommy, Mommy, I gave Tony a HORLICK!!!”
You should have seen my cousin’s wife’s eyes bug out!
Apparently she was not acquainted with Horlick’s Malted Milk.
“Ah jus’ couldn’ believe what Ah thought Ah heard…”
My nephew was learning to talk and had some phonetic troubles. The sound “Tr” was lost and resulted in the “F” sound. So… one day, while driving him around, he saw a Dump Truck pull up beside us, with the driver’s window down and yelled, excitedly, “It’s a dumb fuck!!”
At some point, same nephew was not quite sure on the concept of superlatives and just what “HUGE” meant. At some point he learned that 70 miles per hour was real fast. He decided that “70 miles for hour” was the fastest speed ever. In fact, “70 miles for hour” became the most extreme anything. He therefore commented once, “that is 70 miles for hour big.”
My grandmother’s cousin was born and raised in Kentucky. Once, while drinking Iced Tea, she started laughing and then started choking. When the others at the table asked her what happened, she tried to tell them that she chocked on a cube of ice. Being from Kentucky, she said, “Ah swallowed mah ass hole.”
My daughter stuck her out the window of our house one evening and saw the Moon rising. She got very excited and yelled “Daddy daddy there’s *astronomy[/] outside!”
My little 4 yr old niece came over on sunday for a family get together.Walked in and turned to my grandmother and said"Where’s uncle Chris , i wanna get in trouble".U don’t know what my sister told her. But i swear i’m not THAT bad with her.
I was baby-sitting once for two little girls who were around four and six at the time. We were watching TV in their living room - the older girl was sitting in a chair, I was sitting on the couch, and the younger girl was laying with her head on my chest. All of a sudden she turns to me and says,
“Kendra, your boobies are so soft. They’re like pillows!”
Every guy I’ve dated has gotten a kick out of this story.
Strangest:
Kid drawing a picture of an airplane says “Teacher Cyn, this plane’s going to fly! It’s going to fly like a goose!”
Grossest:
“Hey Teacher! Look! I’ve got a booger stuck between my teeth!” (Yes. He did.)
Best compliment:
I took off my sweatshirt to reveal my white eyelet t-shirt and 3 year old Billy gasps and then shouts “Teacher Cyn! That’s what I call beautiful!” (is this kid a winner or what?)
This just happened yesterday. We have 3 cats at our house of varying sizes. One is a pretty big one, and somehow I got to talking about their various sizes with my four year old daughter, Meghan. I said “Hoss is pretty big, he’s a heavy-duty cat.” Later that day, I’m watching tv and she comes up beside my ear and says “Dad, why did you call Hoss a fat dooty?”. It took me only a minute to realize she had equated “heavy” with “fat”.
In honor of upcoming Mother’s Day, I’ll tell two cute stories about my mama’s oldest baby (me!).
I had a series of febrile convulsions between ages 1 and 2 and my mom took me to a pediatric neurologist to rule out brain damage. I was not quite 2 at the time of this appointment. The doctor checked me out and, after the exam, was talking to my mom about my development. He asked if I was talking yet, and Mom replied that I had been talking in sentences since before my first birthday. The doctor (probably not believing her) asked me if I had anything to say for myself. I tapped my mom’s left boob and announced, “Daddy says this is my titty,” then tapped the right boob, “and this is his titty.”
About that same time, my dad took me for a walk in the park. Several old ladies approached, mooing over how cute and precious I was. Dad was pretty swelled up with pride until his golden-haired princess announced to the ladies, “My grandad is a good boy – he don’t say ‘shit’ no more!”
One time I was walking through campus at the end of homecoming week. The sidewalks were covered in fraternity graffiti. A group of kids from a local elementary school were touring through. One of the boys looked at the sidewalks and said, “Look! Gang symbols!”
oldest nephew is the son of a doctor. While most children learn body parts like “eyes”, “ears”, etc. nephew #1 learned those and things like “thyroid”, “spleen” and others. One night, before he was 2, his dad took him to work at the hospital to pick up some stuff and introduced son to fellow doctors. When the son saw the bulb of the blood pressure cuff hanging out of a doctor’s lab coat, he asked, “Are those his testicles?”
When I was young, I had a stomach virus. I told my grandmother that I had been sick because I had “that ole iris bug.”
On a family camping trip a few years ago, we were gathered around the campfire, I with my four year old cousin in my lap. We were explaining about her grandmother’s bridgework and how she could actually take her teeth OUT. She was appalled, visibly. So we asked her grandma to take the bridge out show her. It scared brianna to death. She screamed and screamed.
Anyway, the next morning, we’re sitting around the campfire again and as her grandmother emerged from the tent, Brianna said,
“uh OH! Here comes Her Can Take Her Teeth Out Grandma!”
When Cranky Jr. was six weeks old and still pretty much a lump, we took a trip and I was changing his diaper on a bench inside the ladies room at a museum. I noticed that I’d attracted the attention of a little girl (probably around 5) who was waiting for her mom or sister to finish and emerge from the stall. I smiled at her and she asked “Is that a boy baby or a girl baby?” I immediately figured she hadn’t seen anything when I was changing the diaper. I told her he was a boy. She said “That’s what I thought” a little defensively. Since she seemed embarrassed about having asked, I said it can be hard to tell when they’re this little, and don’t have much hair, and are wearing simple clothes that either a boy or girl could wear.
She primly informed me “Well, you can also tell by their privates. That’s how I could tell!”
Several odd things that came out when my sister got divorced (her son was about seven). Stu’s first comment was “Does this mean we can have popsicles?” My former brother-in-law was a big hunter and fisherman, and the freezer was always too full of game to store frozen treats. I thought it was funny/weird that this was the first impact of Dad leaving he could come up with.
Later that year he was asked to draw his family in art class. He only drew his Dad. The teacher was concerned because she knew he lived with his mom & sister and wondered what this meant. When she asked him where the rest of his family was, Stu said “It’s Tuesday, that’s what my family looks like on Tuesdays.” Tuesday was his dad’s visitation night.
This is a story my mom tells about ME on occasion.
When I was in preschool, I was really into Sesame Street,
Mr. Rogers Neiborhood, The Electric Company, Zoom, etc.
At the time, my mom was working in a beauty salon.
Apparently, I had just seen a segment teaching the difference in sizes of similar objects, and I wanted to give a demonstration to the salon patrons of what I’d learned.
Spying the customers in the chairs, I found my victims.
Choosing a petite, an average size, and one who was heavy set, I said the following:
I used to work in a gymnasium and we had a lot of kids coming in the mornings for their gym classes.
While they said some funny things on occasion and were generally great kids, I saw and heard some things in the boy’s locker room I’d sooner forget. Apart from the constant profanity and abuse they dished out to each others, the 9 year olds and up had a fascination with sexual matters that would gross out any healthy adult to the point of physical illness.
shudder
For a while I was actually FOR censorship on TV because of that!
Nice kids though, they just have to learn not to share too much with strangers
I’ve been blessed with a couple of really great child care providers over the past 8 years. My second one, Diane, greeted me almost in tears one day, dying to pass along a quote from my then-5 year old son.
One of the reasons Diane was so great was that she was a real stickler for nutrition, and willing to be the “bad cop” over it — so I knew that even if my picky son didn’t eat much dinner, he had had a nutritious lunch. She had two rules: First, the kids didn’t necessarily have to eat everything she served, but they were required to try one bite of it. Second, if you can’t say anything nice about it, don’t say anything at all. (No “Ewww, gross” comments allowed.)
That day, she had served Mexican food for lunch. I have never been a fan of refried beans, so I never serve them at home. Chris took one look at them and started to make a comment. Diane reminded him of the ground rules. He thought a second and commented “That looks like REALLY NICE dog poop.”
When my son was 3, he began exhibiting a strange behavior.
He never had imaginary friends and the like, but my wife and I noticed something unusual whenever we went shopping: He would start responding to questions, although we had not said anything. It usually went like this: We would be walking down the aisle with him in the cart seat. All of the sudden he would say “Oh, OK,” but we hadn’t said anything. Sometimes he would say “OK, I’ll be there.”
So, we started paying attention whenever this happened and it finally dawned on us. He was responding to the store PA: “Clean up on Aisle 9,” “Price check at the register.”
