Listen, kids,” I said to a motley crew of youngsters huddled around a clump of daffodils I'd planted in the fall. “I’ve called you here for a special reason.”
“What thpecial
reason?” asked a little girl whose pigtails bounced in rhythm to her lisp.
The child couldn’t have given me a better cue for practicing
my latest theories on child psychology if I had paid her.
“Oh, I’m just so worried about these
pretty flowers. I need some neighbor kids to keep
them safe.”
“You don’t want nuffing to hurt your fwowers?" the pigtailed child asked, putting her little face so close to mine that I could smell her
bubblegum.
“That’s right,” I said.
“If all you children protect my flowers, I know they’ll be safe. Will
everybody help?”
“Ah ha! This child
psychology stuff really works,” I thought, as each newly-recruited Flower Power Ranger
took a solemn oath to guard my daffodils.
“It all comes down to understanding how kids think,” I
boasted to my husband when he came home from his job. “If you don’t
want kids to pick your flowers, you enlist their help in guarding them. Don’t know why I never thought of that before.”
“You never thought of that before, because it won’t work,” my
spouse laughed, just as Little Miss Pigtails burst through our
patio doors, bearing not one, but a whole fistful of daffodils, some
still attached to their uprooted bulbs.
“I just wescued your fwowers from a giant bumblebee!” she cried.
“I bwot them in to save them from his thting!”
So much for child psychology,” I said and put the rescued
flowers in a vase.
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| “What thpecial reason?” asked a little girl whose pigtails bounced in rhythm to her lisp. |
