Art Linkletter Was Right!!!

How many of you, my readers, remember the old Art Linkletter show, "People Are Funny?"

And if you, like me, watched that program way back when, you'll remember that he always had a segment called "Kids Say the Darnedest Things" and boy, is that ever the truth!

Having raised three kids of my own and now, working with my younger daughter here to help her see to raising her two youngsters, that segment of good old Mr. Linkletter's show comes back to me almost daily now!

The grandchildren here do say some really choice things from time to time, that's for sure!

Last week one day, Mandy was up in her room, putting clothes away and she heard Kurtis coming up the stairs. She knew since the door to his room as well as to Maya's room were each closed and her door was open, that he would be coming into her room as a result. So, she decided to play a little trick on him and she knelt down beside the dresser and when he came into the room, she jumped up at him, and yelled "RARRRGH!"

Well, she about scared the living daylights out of the poor kid, don't 'cha know!

She told me later that he immediately started to pout and got this "poor me, poor me" look he gets on his face so she felt sorry for him and hugging him, told him she was sorry to see she had evidently frightened him so much.

His response to her was a very somber one as he pointed his finger at her and said, "Yes, you did scare me and DON'T you ever do that to me again!"

You have to love not just what they say but also the way they say it too.

This past weekend, while Mandy and Ken had gone down to Maryland for a quick visit with Ken's family there, Kurtis and Maya spent Friday and Saturday night with Mandy's best friend and her family at their place about six miles from here.

On Saturday, Nick had taken Kurtis outside to show him some construction work that is taking place almost in their backyard which involves a guy working there running a backhoe apparently.

Now Kurtis loves virtually anything with an engine -cars, trucks, sure but also trains, planes and big, heavy equipment too. But, he'd never seen something like a backhoe actually in action so he just about went bonkers watching the guy running that machine!

Nick, Mandy's friend's husband, said he just jumped up and down, squealing for joy and kept saying over and over, "I just can't believe that. I just can't believe that!"

Tonight now, after being put to bed, he started calling that he wanted something but I was unable to make out from downstairs exactly what he wanted so up the steps to his room I had to go.

When I went in there, he wasn't fussing at all, but rather, had a question burning in the back of his mind.

"If you get something sticky in your hair, will it make you turn into a ball and stick to things?" is what he asked me.

HUH? What the heck kind of question is that was my initial thought! He had the tv in his room on so I glanced over at that to see if maybe there was something on there about things in your hair or some such but the Disney channel didn't have anything that looked remotely like it referenced something like the question he'd given to me.

So I had to kind of fake it and just reassure him that nothing was going to happen to his hair, assuming that was what he was worried about.

His next statement then showed what really was on his mind though as he told me, "I need chocolate milk!"

Well, alrighty then! Actually that came as no surprise to me because it's pretty much standard operating procedures with him on a nightly basis!

When I came downstairs then to get him more milk, I told Elizabeth, my son's girlfriend, what I thought he'd asked me and she laughed and gave me the correct translation.

Seems he had asked her earlier if you got chewing gum in your hair, would it make you go bald? And when he had tried to ask me a similar question about that subject, where he was actually saying "bald" I mistook that word to be "ball" -either way, he's happy now knowing he has nothing to worry about!

Just as long as he doesn't put chewing gum in his hair cause that might cause his mother to start pulling her own hair out then while trying to remove chewing gum from his.

But also, I think some of this comes from questions in his mind too as he tries to understand what happened to my hair and why I was bald for the past almost four months and am finally beginning to have some regrowth there on my head now!

At least, that's my theory about that and I'm sticking to it!