Kids Get Creative With Classroom "Show 'n Tell"

Published October 9, 1985

As hectic as today's lifestyles are, it's an ill-advised mother who doesn't find time to provide appropriate objects for her kids to take to school for "Show 'n Tell."

Left to their own devices, children take things to show like their parent's old love letters (to be read aloud with appropriate sound effects), the Tupperware container that's been growing mold in the family fridge since Thanksgiving, or the black lace garter belt that has been in Mom's underwear drawer since the days before pantyhose.

My youngest son once exhibited a box of expensive gourmet chocolates his dad had given me for Valentine's Day. 

Of course, every kid in the his class had to have a "hands-on" experience with its contents, and by the time I got that box back, the only thing left was the smell.

Speaking of smells, one of my daughters recently took a pair of her father's dirty gym socks to school, passing them around so everyone could see how bad they stunk.

Still, "showing" is not as bad as "telling."

During Show 'n Tell, kids have been known to reveal everything from their parents' bank balance to what Daddy shouted the time Mom wrecked the car.

I personally think any teacher who encourages Show 'n Tell deserves to have her private diary made into a major motion picture.

But I'm not going to say that in front of my littles. At least three of them have Show 'n Tell tomorrow, and if they can't find something to show, I know they would tell...

EVERYONE HAS OWN IDEA OF ULTIMATE COMFORT FOOD

 Deseret News, Wed., January 13-14, 1993

“The best thing about bad weather is how good it makes soup taste,” I told my boy one stormy day as he reluctantly sat down to what I considered the ultimate comfort food—a steaming bowl of vegetables with bits of beef and broth.

Apparently, the weather hadn’t gotten bad enough to convince the world’s pickiest eater, who also happens to be my 15-year-old son, to lift his spoon.

“So that’s why you start peeling carrots every time it rains!” he said in a voice as dry as the untouched crackers on his plate.  “So you can save the runoff in the barrel to make soup.”

If there hadn’t been the slightest chance he was just kidding, I would have suggested he try an alternate menu, like bread and water, for the rest of his life.

Instead, I just smiled and gave him kitchen duty for a month.  Unfortunately, he didn’t appreciate my generosity.  

“When was the last time you ate watermelon?” he had to ask. 

If I have an Achilles’ heel where food is concerned it’s watermelon.  Once during my childhood, when my school’s lunchroom monitor told me I couldn’t leave the cafeteria until I’d finished my fruit cup, I threw up.

“OK!” I surrendered.  “I’ll never make soup again.  Next time it storms, I’ll serve cold cuts with ice cream, and we’ll all sit around eating ‘til our lips turn blue.”

“I’ve got a better idea,” he countered.  “Next time it storms, let’s go out for pizza.  That way you won’t have to spend the day stewing over what to cook.”

“Ha!” I croaked in honor of his pun.  And then, I smiled for real. It’s pretty hard to stay mad at a kid who’s so considerate.  “How come it’s taken me so long to figure out that, from your point of view, pizza is the ultimate comfort food?”

“Because it isn’t!” he said with a voice as smooth as olive oil.  “From my point of view, the ultimate comfort food is watermelon.  “But I’d never try to make you eat something you couldn’t stand!

To my credit, I did learn to like watermelon later in life!

POLITICAL JARGON JUST CHILD’S PLAY

“Power is not a substitute for reason,” said Rep. Newt Ginrich, R-Ga, in the opening rounds of GOP squabble over President Reagan’s lobby for a $98.9 billion tax hike to ease federal budget deficits. Bedrock conservatives don’t want it, and the word is out that a good old-fashioned donnybrook threatens to muddy up the House floor, as some of the President’s old friends, including former Reagan political adviser Lyn Nofziger and former Reagan domestic policy adviser Martin Anderson square off against those opposed to the administration’s plan.

 “Donnybrook!” Now there’s a word! The first time I ever heard it used in reference to government, I thought they were talking about a new senator. My 8-year-old daughter and I were busily engaged in the serious business of icing a chocolate mayonnaise cake at the time, and as the 6 o-clock news pumped out the latest political palpitations, and I came to realize that what I know about politics would just about fill a measuring cup. 

“The Republicans are the ones with the long noses and big ears,” I told my little girl in reply to her question about our country’s two-party system. “The Democrats,” I further explained, “are the ones with the short noses and big ears.” “With all those big ears, Mommy, how come no one ever listens?” 

My darling child had put the whole country’s problems in a nutshell. “Oh, they do,” I demurred, “about as good as you do, when I ask you to help me clean the house. “Do they help clean their house? she asked. “I suppose some of them do,” I could only hope.

 “The ones who don’t...are they the dirty politicians?"   I wondered about that one.“Some of them are pretty good about sweeping things under the rug,” I had to say. 

My protege was deep in thought. “What would happen if they crossed a Democrat with a Republican? Would they get a Democran or a Republicat?” she finally asked. I said I hoped a Republicat, since I’ve always been partial to kittens.  

“Maybe a lion kind of cat!” My daughter’s eyes lit up. 

“Hmm, the King of Beasts!” I could see this regal political hybrid, pacing back and forth across the Senate floor—a feline solution to the nation’s political polarity. Our conversation had lifted me to an intellectual high.

 In the next moment, I’d resolved the problem of the tax hike, too. “All us good Americans could use the tax cut money we received in July to pay the tax hike Reagan has proposed,” I said out loud. My daughter wiped the chocolate frosting from her chin.

 

Will That First Teacher Realize the Worth of Small Son?

 

Rain or Shine

LAKESIDE REVIEW

5 September 1984

Matthew started school yesterday. I watched him saunter—almost swagger down the hall.  One small hand swung confidently against his stiff new jeans, while the other hand’s knuckles tightened on a pencil box so new you could still see the gummy place where the price tag had been.

Matt-Matt’s freshly cut hair, the color of ripe wheat, bounced jauntily on the crown of his head, as he maintained a safe distance ahead of me, but not so far away that his clear, blue eyes couldn’t focus on my face whenever he looked back over his shoulder.

This, he did regularly, if somewhat self-consciously, before jostling against some nearby kid as though to create a diversion from those apprehensive backwards glances.

When Matthew finally reached the kindergarten room, my thoughts raced ahead to contemplate the teacher waiting outside the door to turn the page of a new chapter in my small child’s life.

A thousand questions quarreled with the peaceful state of mind I had sought to affect as an example to my son. 

Will this teacher notice how vulnerable Matt’s mouth and chin are when his eyes sparkle with pseudo macho mischief?

Could she ever guess how much the tough little kid who likes to flex his muscles in public loves his well-worn plush leopard in private?

Will she understand that the biggest tease in in her class, the one who doesn’t mind tugging on a little girl’s braids, would shrink to ever pull a puppy’s tail.

Can she sense that a small boy who seems so self-contained would love to have a hug from time to time?

Upon reaching the long-awaited destination of his first five  years, Matthew took his place behind a table low enough to stub your toe on.  Forcing an ear-to-ear  grin from across his teeth, he gazed with bravado at the brand-new woman in his life.

I hoped she saw the momentary wobble of his chin.

 

Snow Horse on the Mountain

    On a green-meadow day, when the sun is an orange marigold in a blue, silk, Utah sky, and onion tops are whiskers on Earth’s black velvet face, Grandfather pulls me up to his John Deere tractor, and we sit cozy, looking far away into the crevice of an unnamed mountain peak high in the Wasatch Mountains to the east.    

    “There she is,” Grandpa says, his voice soft and whispery like an early summer breeze.  “Can you see her up there, Pea Pod?”  Grandpa’s brown eyes twinkle as he calls me his pet name.

    “Looks like a snow goat,” I giggle.  It’s an old joke between the two of us, and I know exactly what my grandfather’s next words are going to be.

    “No, it’s a bob-tailed draft horse—a Percheron, just like the one my daddy had before we  got this tractor.”

    Grandpa’s eyes get shiny.  He pats the John Deere’s dented sides, as if the big, three-wheeled machine were a dear, old friend.   It’s no coincidence that our family’s antique tractor bears the old draft horse’s name. 

    “Good, old Nellie Belle,” my granddad says, his voice getting husky.  “I used to ride her bareback in the fields.”

    I know by heart where this conversation will go.   Grandpa likes to tell me how the ghostly, horse-shaped figure shows up every year on the mountain ridge that runs down Webb Canyon.

    We both know the Snow Horse is just a patch of un-melted, winter snow, a massive white mural painted there by strokes of sunshine and shadow.

    But I love hearing Grandpa remember how early settlers began using the Snow Horse as a planting gauge soon after Mormon pioneers began farming Davis County in the 1850’s, 

    The Snow Horse usually appears around the first of June, and the old farmers warn, “You shouldn’t plant your tender crops until you see the Snow Horse prancing on the mountainside.” 

   Tomato seedlings and corn shoots might freeze on days cold enough to keep the mountain snow from melting into the familiar draft horse shape.

    If you spot her early, say in the middle of May, that’s bad news.   People say that means the winter’s snowpack was shallow, and everybody worries about water shortages or what Grandpa calls a drought. 

    Once the Snow Horse becomes visible, farmers hope she’ll stay awhile.   When she lasts until the Fourth of July, farmers know they’ll have plenty of moisture for their crops to grow.

    “So what do you think, Pea Pod?”  Grandpa asks each year after he’s rehearsed the local Snow Horse lore, though he knows exactly what I’ll say.

    I crane my neck and look at the majestic Snow Horse standing there with her long, long legs and short, bobbed tail. 

    “Still looks like a snow goat,” I giggle. 

     Grandpa tugs my braids and laughs, “Snow Horse in June--good harvest moon.” His voice is all silver ripples—like soft, summer rain. 

    For a moment, a faraway look shadows Grandpa’s face, and I know that he’s remembering every snow horse he’s ever seen prancing on that mountainside on a sunny day in June.

    And he’s right about the harvest moon.  Come autumn, on a wheat-gold day, when the sun is a bushel basket in a blue-linen, Utah sky, and wheat stalks are stubble on Earth’s brown, leather face, Grandpa and I will once again sit cozy on old Nellie Belle, the tractor. 

    By then, the Snow Horse will be just a memory on a burnished, gold ridge.  

    But when the sweet, acrid scent of newly dug onions spills into the crisp, harvest air, and ripe tomatoes hang like red jewels on tough, green vines,  the corn cribs will be full , and we’ll remember how this year’s Snow Horse had lingered well past June’s long green-meadow days into July.

Gift Buying for Picky Wife is Tricky Business

 My husband was browsing in the appliance department of a large downtown store when he ran into his friend Walt Stokums.  Walt was gazing bleary-eyed at a row of steam irons.

"Howdy, Walt!"  Dave slapped him on the back.  "Where's Connie?"

"Oh, she stayed home with the kids, so I could shop for her birthday present," Walt confided, offering Dave a clammy handshake.  

"Gonna' surprise the little woman with a new iron?"  Dave asked.

"Well, I don't know," Walt's voice trembled.  "Connie is so fussy.  She always returns whatever I pick out.  And if I get her anything useful, she thinks I'm making a statement about her housekeeping."

"You could get her something frivolous--like a new negligee," Dave winked.

"I tried that last year, but she exchanged it for a carpet sweeper."

"What about books?"

"Afraid not.  I'd have to bribe someone from Harlequin to smuggle a new potboiler off the press before the ink was dry.  Otherwise, she'd already have it."

"Doesn't she ever read anything else?'

"Only self-help books on home and time management.  But I know better than to give her one of those.  She already has a schedule on the bathroom mirror--five minutes is all I get to shower, dry my hair, and shave.  And if I leave lather in the sink, I lose thirty-five seconds of my breakfast time."

"Why don't you just take her out to dinner?"  Dave got practical.

"No way!  Connie has been on a diet since she was born.  Two years ago, I thought I had it made when I gave her a digital bathroom scale, but that really backfired.  For the next six months, we had nothing but green salad and Diet Coke for supper every night."

Walt's eyes were beginning to look like marbles, and he began to hyperventilate."

"Maybe you'd better come over here and sit down for a minute."   With the help of an eavesdropping clerk, Dave settled the distraught man in a straight-backed chair.

"Poor devil," my husband said to the clerk,  there's got to be some way we can help."  

In reply, the clerk leaned over and whispered something.

"I've got it!" Dave shouted, amazed that what seemed to be the perfect solution could be presented in just three words.  "A gift certificate, Walt.  You can give Connie a gift certificate.  Then she can get herself something she really wants!"

Walt sadly shook his head.  "That's exactly why I'm here.  I gave her a gift certificate this morning,  and she sent me back with it.  She wants me to use it on something to surprise her."

COUNTRY SERENITY CAN DRIVE YOU NUTS

 

“LAKESIDE REVIEW”

Around 1982

 

And so we moved—picked up our pots and pans, carted off our clothes and canned goods, bundled up our bedding, and trucked away the trappings of our suburban lifestyle, to settle far out in the country.

 

My husband was exuberant over the change.  “Ah, this is the life,” he jubilated with a gesture that encompassed a meadow-like expanse of unfenced green behind our newly built home.

 

I was not totally convinced.  “We’ll certainly have to be more organized down here,” I said, wondering if the grocery checkers at the now far-away market would miss my daily patronage.

 

“But, we’ll grow a bumper garden crop,” my optimistic spouse replied.  Picking up a brown clod, he let the fine warm sand trickle between his fingers.  “And it’s so peaceful here.”

 

“Way down here, we’ll have to budget more for gasoline,” I had to interject.

 

“We’ll go for walks in country air,” came his response.  He took a luxuriant breath and continued, “Just listen to the calm…”

 

I listened.  Two begoggled flies played Kamikaze pilot with my nose.  “We’ll have to buy a dozen No-Pest Strips.”

 

“But for such peace and quiet!  It’s a trade-off for tranquility.”

 

“There’ll be no more doorstep mail delivery,” I sighed.

 

“No more door-to-door salesmen,” he countered.

 

“No next-door neighbors,” I cried.

 

“No freeway noise, no airplane flight patterns, no recess bells at noon,” he rejoined in rapid fire.

 

I had the next part memorized.  I’d heard the words so many times before:  “Serenity.  We’ll sleep like babies, awakening refreshed.”

 

That evening we tried it out.  Turning off the bedroom light, I slipped between fresh sheets crisped by country air.  Cool shadows merged to inky black, and I marveled at the soothing absence of people-perpetuated noise.  Only a courting insect whispered chirrups to his mate.

 

But before I drifted off in awe of the almost perfect stillness of night, I opened one eye.  The moon had moved to a spot directly above our partially opened window, and I could see my tired husband where he sat bolt upright on the edge of the bed.  Dark circles of fatigue made purple splotches underneath his bleary eyes.

 

“That blasted cricket,” David groaned, “is driving me berserk!”

AEROBIC DANCING: '3s' TRYING TO BE '10s'

From "The Lakeside Review," a subsidiary of the "Standard Examiner" 

Anyone remember Bo Derek?  Good! I've been trying to forget her ever since my husband promised to watch the kids while I went to my aerobic dancing class.  Handing him a can of Similac and a pack of Pampers diapers,  I grabbed my gym bag and left the house, hoping to return looking just like that iconic star of the movie 10.

My friend Susan followed me through the gym's dressing room door.  Sitting on narrow plank benches between rows of pink lockers, we stowed our Mom jeans with our loose-fitting tunics.  Then, slipping on spandex leotards and tights, we both began to laugh.  Sue laughed at me because I curve in all the wrong places, and I laughed at her, because she doesn't curve at all.

Self consciously, we put our shirts back on and slunk out onto the dance floor to meet our instructor, the drop-dead gorgeous Miss Lindsay.

"She's gotta' be allergic to eating," I said, searching for a word to describe the kind of body proportions no one ever calls thin or skinny.

Just as we "dancers" lined up and dropped to our knees for the preliminary floor exercises, I got a Charlie horse and had to sit out all during the sit-ups.  

But I was proud to be back in the line-up for "berry pickers."

"This is easy," I said, my hands flat on the floor.

"You're not supposed to bend your knees," Miss Lindsay demurred.

After that, we were instructed to check our heart rate, but since I couldn't find mine, our mentor showed me how to slide two fingers "along your jawline to the appropriate spot for pulse counting."  Only when my knuckles kept getting detoured by my double chin, did I take Susan's advice.  "Just pick a number between one and a hundred," she suggested.

Suddenly, the room began to rock with the introductory fanfare of "The Star Wars Strut."  Mesmerized, I watched a series of breathtaking moves with names like the "C3PO Side Step" and the "R2D2 Robot Roundoff."  Soon I was huffing and puffing like Darth Vader, himself.  Beads of sweat soaked my body, while cool, svelte Miss Lindsay floated along looking like an advertisement for "Ice Blue Secret Deodorant."

An hour later, I stood in front of the locker room mirror, assessing the results of my recent workout.

"Well, what do you think?  Do I look like Bo Derek?"

Sue chose her words carefully,  "I think you need some corn rows in your hair."

Work Magic; Makes Kids Disappear

 From THE LAKESIDE REVIEW, a subsidiary of the STANDARD EXAMINER

Harry Houdini, were he still alive, wouldn't have anything on my kids when it comes to disappearing acts.

Ever since I first got the notion that strong, able-bodied elementary school-aged youngsters ought to be able to help load the dishwasher after dinner, my littles have perfected a vanishing act that would be difficult for the best illusionist to match.

No Hocus pocus, no Abracadabra, not even the most sincere A la peanut butter sandwich could work the magic of the words Clean-up Time!

Usually, I don't even have to say the words.  From the exact moment I set my supper fork down to the precise second when the last crumbs have been wiped from the kitchen table, and all the greasy plates, platters, and cooking pots have been nestled  in the Kitchen Aid by me, an unearthly quiet envelops my kitchen.

Not even a runny-nosed sniffle remains behind to break the spell.  Visitors to my home during the after-dinner hour don't even believe I have children.

Other incantations likely to produce the same results as the nightly call for KP duty, include please, clean your room, rinse out the sink after you brush your teeth,  and how about dusting the piano?  Practice the piano also rates high on the list of expressions guaranteed to make kids hide.

Sometimes, my missing children are gone so long I start to worry about alien abductions.   Then and only then do I mouth the magic words I've learned will bring them back quicker than the front door can slam six times.

Open Sesame, is all I have to say with my hand on the cookie jar lid.  Then the kids come back, but the cookies disappear.

This vintage Hull cookie jar that my own mom bought for her mother seems the perfect illustration for a newspaper column about kids who disappear when there's a job to be done.

LIZARD FOOD GIVES MOM CRAWLIES

 DESERET NEWS:  November 16, 1994

The day my 12-year-old daughter brought home two lizards, I thought we had finally acquired the perfect pets.

Lizards don't bark, chirp, or run around in an exercise wheel all night.  They never bite, scratch, or drool.  They don't beg to go out ten times a day, walk on the kitchen table, shed fur or feathers, chew up brand new shoes, or drink out of the toilet.

They don't even stink, as long as you clean their terrarium every so often.  That's probably their biggest selling point.  So what if those belly-dragging, dry-skinned cousins to a snake are less than cuddly?  They're practically maintenance free.  Just turn on the heating stone, fill their water bowl, and dump in a dollar's worth of crickets once a week.

Those crickets, however, are somewhat of a problem.  First of all, people give you weird looks when you walk out of a pet store with a transparent bag full of six-legged crawlies.

"Ya see that dame over there with the sack of cockroaches?  She must be carrying one heck of a grudge.  Probably gonna sabotage some fast-food joint, or maybe the whole mall."

Second, because Bill and Trudy, as our two reptilian friends prefer to be called, do not clean their plates at mealtime, there are always leftovers--survivors might be a better word.  These surviving crickets, members of a strange breed not normally found outdoors in the bushes, hide under rocks or burrow into the sand of the cage where they play dead until the middle of the night, 2 a.m. being their designated wake-up-and-prepare-for-the-concert time.  After an initial tune-up session, they rub their squeaky violin string legs together for at least six hours straight.  The fact that they only know one note is enough to make the awakened sleeper beg for Chinese water torture.

Third, if the lizards don't eat Jimmy Cricket and his pals in a very short time, those crickets begin to eat each other, which means I have to run to the mall in the middle of the week to get another dozen bugs.

Add that up--a dollar's worth of crickets twice a week for fifty-two weeks!  One hundred four bucks a year for lizard food seems a mighty hefty sum when you consider the lack of gratitude Bill and Trudy show.  They don't even wag their tails.

Fourth, in some unknown way, some of the crickets always escape.  How those bugs get out, I can't begin to imagine.  The fact is, they do.  I know this for a fact, because I occasionally find them hunkered down in places I don't care to think about, including my underwear drawer and  the slippers I slide my bare feet into every morning.

"I keep worrying that the escapees will decide to start a family and overrun my house," I say to the pet supply owner who sells them.

"No chance of that," the man tries to set me straigt.  “They can't reproduce because they're all the same sex."

This little bit of knowledge not only reassures me, it sparks my curiosity.  "So are they girls or boys?"

"Quite frankly, I don't know," he drawls.  "Girls one week.  Maybe boys the next!"

If the lizards don’t eat Jiminy Cricket and his pals in a short time, those crickets begin to eat each other!

Home for Sale...But Memories Linger

"Lakeside Review," May 19, 1982

Our house is for sale.  People come through it and admire the vaulted ceilings.  Some are impressed by the intercom; others take a fancy to the sprinkler system.   Occasionally someone even comments on the kitchen sink.  Yes, it does have a garbage disposer for gobbling up leftover peas and chicken bones.

They notice other things too--the gouge in the bathroom linoleum by the tub; the patched screen on the back storm door.

But where is the prospective buyer who can step over the squeaky board in the entry and into the flow of memories that have made this house a home?  Where is the would-be owner who can look past the fingerprints on the hallway mirror and see reflections of contented living, instead?

As I guide so many browsing strangers through each room, my thoughts hold an open house that cries out for telepathic powers.

"This is the living room," I tell a man who looks as though he'd like to yawn.  (Living as in lived here for six special years.  This is where we've said our Happy Birthdays at least 28 times and vacuumed up the crumbs from each decorated cake.  We scrubbed blood from the carpet there when Jennifer broke her nose, and here we knelt in prayer for Stacee, when she was struck by a car.)

"This next room would be the dining room.  As you see, we haven't got that kind of furniture." (But listen:  you can hear the songs we've sung around the piano.  The kids all have their favorites; Matthew always asks for Come from Alabama with a Band-Aid on my Knee.)

I resist the urge to ask my daughter to play a piece or two, and we move on into the kitchen.

"These countertops are new," I tell the lady who pops her gum and opens a cupboard door.  (Can't you feel the warmth that emanates from this homely, chrome table where we share our meals and talk about our joys and sorrows?  Can't you smell the dozens of cookies that we've baked in this oven?  That dent on the wall near the highchair is where each of the six babies has banged his cup and spoon.)

"The next room, a bedroom, is where two of our daughters dream."  (Pink gingham and giggles...bedtime stories and goodnight kisses.  Yes, the light's burned out again.  They don't like me to turn it off at night.")

"Down the hall, on your right," is the bathroom."  (There never was room for a potty chair in there, but, somehow, we managed...)

We move along to the master bedroom.  (I saved my coupon refunds to buy that wallpaper.  Heavily flocked, it slithered off the walls the first time I tried hanging it.  Finally, someone told me about de-glossing and sizing the old enamel paint.  Yes, there is room for a baby's cradle on one side of the bed.  Our first son, Michael, was almost born in the room.  The paramedics came and took me to the hospital, but somehow, it always seemed different in here after that.)

"Last of all we have the family room."  (Luckily for us, it was made so large.  See how neatly Mike and Matt's bunkbeds fit in the corner here.  Each of our children has at one time slept in that crib there.  And we still have room for the couch, TV,  recliner, my writing desk, and a bookcase.  Yes, the fireplace has a gas log, but we can still burn wood.  And if you look behind the grate, you'll probably find popcorn kernels and wrinkled scraps of Monopoly money.) 

There's an exterior door on that wall.  (But before you open it and step outside to inspect the yard, listen--listen very carefully, for there's laughter in the rafters and a heartbeat in this house.) 

Cost of Health Care May be Important, but Half-emptied Soda Cans Really Stir Mom Up

 "You've got to be kidding!" my friend Gold spluttered, as she read the results of a poll by Special Report Magazine.

ˆ"Eighty-nine percent of the women who were asked what made them mad last week said it was the rising cost of medical care."

"Well, I said, "doesn't it bother you to pay more for a pair of contact lenses than for a new vacuum?"

"Sure," my friend laughed, "especially since I wouldn't need a vacuum if I couldn't see the dirt.

“But I still think whoever planned that poll left a few categories out--like husbands who put empty mayonnaise jars back in the fridge instead of washing them for the re-cycle bin.  And children who don't wipe their feet."

"Maybe those pollsters were just focusing on large issues," I ventured.

"Large issues!  Who says my 15-year-old's muddy footprints down the hall are not large issues?"

"I mean in areas of national concern."

"Are you saying that women all over the nation don't get concerned when their kids won't eat their vegetables?  And are you suggesting that nine out of ten American females welcome the sight of half-emptied soda cans left all around the family room?"

""No," I answered, "but half-emptied pop cans left out in the family room can hardly be considered an American emergency.  Wasn’t that poll really focusing on national feminist issues like women in the work force and the unavailability of quality child care."

Golda's eyes opened wide. "I hadn't thought about it that way," she admitted.

"So, if someone asked you what made your blood boil last week, would you still be thinking about muddy footprints and abandoned soft drink cans?"

"No," said Gold, enlightened now about feminist issues of national concern:  "In every American bathroom, there's this yellow bathtub ring..."

Published in the “Deseret News,” July 14-15, 1993

Foot in Mouth? Push!

Putting your foot in your mouth is at least as bad as sticking it in quicksand.  The harder you try to get it out, the deeper in it goes.

Of course, there are a few people who always manage to keep their feet planted squarely beneath them where they belong.

These are the rare folks who ambulate through life without ever committing such faux pas as asking someone when their baby is due three weeks after she's delivered, or inviting a middle-aged acquaintance to introduce his mother, when the little woman standing beside him is actually his middle-aged wife.

Such social sure-foots live a carefree existence.  Only they can sample pickled pigs feet without wondering if they should save them for a possible cross-species transplant.  Words like retract, recant, and rephrase are not even in their vocabulary.

Most of us, however, know from experience that a foot in the mouth leaves a bitter aftertaste.  Nervous habits like chewing our nails--finger and toe--are second nature to us, as we try to make things better and end up making them worse.  Much worse.

"I didn't notice how much flatter your stomach is, because I was so busy looking at your face," we might stutter to the newly-delivered mom.

That's another thing about talking when your mouth is full of toes--you can't help but stutter.

"You say this is your wife, not your mother?  I-I-Aye Yi Yi!  Pass the toe jam, please!"

When you get right down to it, there's really only one thing to do once you've stuck your foot in your mouth--shove it in even further.  With your mouth thus plugged, there'll be no way on earth you can put your other foot in it!

What's Worse than Crumbs in the Honey Jar?

If there's one thing I can't stand, it's a honey jar with crumbs in it.

Having come from a large family where everyone had his  or her knife in the honey pot, I recently threatened my own youngsters with a month of plain peanut butter if they even thought about sticking an already-used kitchen utensil into the honey jar.

Since then, even the son who argues food all gets fixed up anyway knows better than to let so much as one microscopic particle of toast fall into the Maid O' Clover bottle when his mom's around.

But the threat of spending thirty days without any honey hasn't kept those kids from trying bizarre methods of applying the sticky stuff to their sandwiches.

In other words, my children will do anything to save themselves the trouble of getting out a clean knife, dipping it in the jar, and letting all that bee-spun sweetness drizzle to the desired spot.

I actually caught one enterprising child turning his knife around, grasping the peanut butter-laden blade with his grimy fingers, and aiming the handle into the bottle.

Another of my littles (or was it my husband?) dumped the amber contents of a half-pint directly into the half-empty Jiff jar, thereby creating a one-step peanut butter and honey sandwich.

But it was four-year-old Julie who finally taught me there are worse things than contaminated honey.  

I had come into the kitchen just as she finished pouring herself an afternoon snack.  There was honey down the side of the bottle, honey on the counter, honey oozing down the cupboard doors, and honey on the floor.

Speechless, I watched the little girl methodically wipe sticky fingers in her hair before picking up a slab of bread that had enough honey oozing from the edges to keep a colony of bees alive all winter.

Beside myself, I opened my mouth with the intention of taking away that child's honey privileges for the rest of her life.  But Julie was way ahead of me.

"Look, Mommy," she said with a sweet as honey look upon her face, "I didn't get no crumbs inside the jar!"

MOMS SHOULD REMEMBER

 January 26, 1983

“Lakeside Review”

 

“For Pete’s sake, Jennifer!  Don’t be so silly!”  I exclaim, poking an impatient finger at the tearstains on my little girl’s beet-red cheeks.

 

How intensely green her eyes have grown in the brief interval since a distracted usher at the wedding we are attending moved the chair on which my daughter had meant to sit.  

 

Sprawled there on the floor, bony knees and elbows exposed, with her skirt hiked up around her thighs, 9-year-old Jennifer is not to be consoled. Despite outstretched hands and whispered reassurances that hardly anyone, not even the unwitting usher now rushing to seat another guest, has noticed how she fell, she is inconsolable.

 

It's no big deal," I try to make her see through tears that trace a salty path down to the corners of her mouth. To my adult eyes, the child’s acute sense of shame seems so out of proportion with the cause that I could be tempted to giggle.  But her thin shoulders have already begun to quiver, as she struggles for control.

 

“Jennifer!”

 

With a half-muffled sob, she ducks to hide her face, but not before I see the image of the little girl I once was reflected in those glistening, plaintiff eyes:

 

Once when I was six years old, I spilled ice cream at a party, and even when the birthday girl passed out shiny pennies and huge balloons, all I could see were swirls of melted chocolate on my skirt.

 

Then there was the time when I sat halfway through Sunday school, before someone told me that my dress was all unbuttoned down the back.

 

“Don't be so silly, Little One,” my voice grows soft. “You just go ahead and let those teardrops fall.”

Our sweet Jennifer when she played Amaryllis 

in Clearfield High School's Music Man

WINTER'S NO WONDERLAND FOR A WORN-OUT MOM

DESERET NEWS

 December 1992

 

Wet boots drying on the heater vent,

mittens scattered all about—

I finally see what my dear mom meant,

when she said winter wore her out!

 

Winter wears me out, too. Ever since Jack Frost dumped his first load of powder on the lawn this year, I've spent my days zipping coats, buttoning boots, hunting lost mittens, arguing with my children about what they may or may not wear outdoors, and mopping up pond-sized puddles in the house.

 

It wouldn't be so bad if my kids, having gone through the tedious process of preparing to frolic in nature's frozen playground, would just go out and stay out. But, like all tots dedicated to the proposition that their mothers can and should be driven crazy, they follow a sacred childhood ritual:

 

1.     First you get your winter clothes (being sure to drag everyone else’s out too) and scatter everywhere, complaining that one of your mittens has a hole in the thumb and you can't even find its mate.

 

3.     Only after Mommy has spent at least 42 minutes hunting your missing mitten and mending the moth-eaten one, do you allow her to tug, pull, and stuff your squirmy body into a complete ensemble of winter attire, minus the goofy earmuffs you had the foresight to hide in your underwear drawer.

 

4.     Then, you decide you have to go potty.

 

5.     Once you have answered nature's call and retrieved the boot your dog dragged under the couch, you finally venture outside long enough to get:

 

a.     completely soaked;

 

b.     icicles hanging from your nose;

 

c.     enough snow clinging to your clothes to make a snowman feel jealous!

 

6.     At some point, meaning after you've spent at least five minutes exploring Winter's Wonderland, you come back inside (bringing all ten of your very closest buddies and a few you’ve never seen before) for the first of many warm-up sessions, spilling steaming mugs of hot chocolate and gobbling enough donuts to dust the floor with a fine layer of powdered sugar.

 

7.     Then, you repeat the whole process ten more times, each time with Mom cheerfully ready at the door to bundle everyone up to go back outside.

 

When evening finally comes, and Daddy gets home from work to find his wife collapsed on the couch and talking to the ceiling, you casually say something like, “Gee, Mom, I'll bet you got a lot done today with us kids playing outside the way we did!”

 

HALF OF HOUSEWORK? HEY, NO PROBLEM!

Deseret News Archives, Wednesday, December 28, 1994 

 

“Now that we're both working,” my best friend Golda told her husband, “You’ve got to do your share of the housework.”

 

The way she described it to me over lunch one Saturday, her spouse couldn't understand why her face took on the color of stewed tomatoes as their discussion evolved. 

 

“OK,” Hasbin said, “I'll make the bed sometimes.  “And,” the man grew magnanimous when Golda started to choke, “I’ll change the toilet paper roll every other time.”

 

“But what about the dishes, sinks, and walls?” Golda sputtered.  “What about the oven, and the microwave and fridge?”

 

“What about them?”  Hasbin asked.  

 

“Well, they get dirty too,” Gold said, her voice as hard but not nearly as pleasant as a Jolly Rancher.

 

“Are you going to do your share or not?”

 

Alright!"  Now Hasbin’s voice was hard. After all, he explained he had no objections to doing his part as long as he knew exactly what was expected of him. “Just how much of all that is my share?”

 

“Half.” Golden closed her mouth like a steel trap.  “You do fifty percent and I'll do fifty. That way we can keep the house clean, hold down our jobs, and be equally overworked.”

 

Hasbin sighed. “Sounds fair enough to me.”

 

Naturally, Golda was ecstatic. Somehow, she had expected to run into a little more resistance in her attempts to even out the pressure she was feeling to keep her house in together without falling apart herself.

 

“Of course,” she waivered, stuffing her Big Mac wrapper into her empty Coke cup.  “Seeing is believing.  I’ll know for sure when I get home today, whether or not my so-called better half is willing to shoulder his half of the load.”

 

“Let me know, how that goes,” I responded.

 

Anxious to find out, I called my friend at work the very next day.

 

“Well?” I asked as soon as she answered the phone.  

 

“Well, what?”

 

“Well, did your hubby follow through on doing his share of the housework?  Is he still committed to doing fifty percent of the chores?”

 

“He sure is!" Golda sounded tired.  “This morning he got up and made his side of the bed!”

 

CHILDREN OFTEN EXPERIENCE PERIODIC BOUTS OF DEAFNESS

As a PTA volunteer, I have on various occasions helped give hearing tests to school-aged children. In the process of having their ears checked, the kids don headsets and listen to a variety of blips and beeps in different frequencies.

 

When a child hears a sound, he raises one hand to indicate his ability to decipher tones within a given decibel range. Of course, if he fails to hear the sound, his hand remains motionless, and the diagnostician takes note of the child’s hearing impairment.

 

However, such hearing tests do not tell the whole story. A youngster whose ears pick up the faintest blip in the examining room quite often suffers from intermittent deafness at home, with symptoms beginning in the morning before he even gets out of bed.

 

Symptoms are most often reported by the child's mother, with a typical case study going like this:

 

Mom: Rise and shine, Junior. It's time to get up.

 

Son: Zzz—Zzz!

 

Mom: Come on, Son! Your alarm has been buzzing for 20 minutes. 

 

Son: Zzz—Zzz!

 

Mom: Young Man, you'd better be out of bed by the time I count to three!  One, two, THREE!!!

 

Son: Aw right, aw right! But ya don't have to yell!

 

Mom: If I didn't yell, you wouldn't hear me.

 

Son: Whadaya mean I wouldn't hear you? You think I'm deaf or something?

 

Mom: Well, sometimes I do wonder. Like yesterday when I told you to take out the garbage, and you walked right by the trash can and left it sitting there. It's still sitting there!

 

Son: I guess I didn't hear you.

 

Mom: And last night, when I asked if you had finished your homework, I could have been talking to the Man in the Moon, the way you kept on staring at the television screen.

 

Son: Guess I didn't hear you then, either.

 

Mom: Ten minutes later you turned your music on so loud that all the neighbors called up mad.

 

Son: Why didn't you tell me? 

 

Mom: I did, but you didn't hear me.

 

Son: Well, maybe my tunes were a little loud, but that's because I like them the way, not because there's anything wrong with my hearing.

 

Mom: So, if there's nothing wrong with your hearing, I guess I'm safe in asking you to take that garbage out before you go to school this morning?

 

Son: Whadju say? 

 

Mom: I said, “TAKE THAT GARBAGE OUT BEFORE YOU GO TO SCHOOL THIS MORNING!!!”

 

Son:  Aw right! Aw right! But I still don't see why you always have to yell!

HIDING IMPERFECTIONS

“Lakeside Review”

May 21st, 1982

 

 

My friend often hides her hands. At church, she folds them neatly in her lap beneath the vinyl edges of an oversized purse. At home, she sinks them deep into the generous pockets that all her clothing seems to have. In winter, she usually wears mittens. 

 

“Why do you do it?” I asked her in a moment of sharing, when we both seemed willing to risk.

 

She spread her long squared-off fingers like a fan before my face. “Because they're so big,” she said. “Just look…”

 

I did look. Funny how I'd never noticed the slight disproportion between those well-scrubbed knuckles and the fawn-like delicacy of her face. It was her expressive eyes that had always seemed large to me.

 

I guess we've all got our vulnerable spot--a sort of cosmetic Achilles heel we seek to camouflage against unsuspecting eyes lest they widen to our sense of imperfection.

 

To others, these so-called “flaws” that preserve us from plainness usually go unnoticed.  But, somehow, from our own perspective, such anomalies grow in direct proportion to our shrinking self-esteem.

 

Once as a young girl, I heard a dentist tell my mother how beautiful my teeth were, despite a “slight overbite.” Forever after that, my incisors felt enormous. Whenever I met anyone I wanted to impress, my mouth would get so dry I could hardly close my lips!

 

A beautiful, dark-haired college girl, I once knew, complained about her funny toes, and someone else--a handsome, athletic fellow with biceps like Superman’s, always combed his hair over what he called his ragged ears.

 

My own daughter would put lemon juice on her freckles, if I'd let her.  But when the sunny rays of summer spatter tawny dapples on the porcelain primness of her nose, I see the gold that shimmers in her hair…

DANDELIONS HAVE VALUE AFTER ALL

"But you mustn't pick the neighbor's flowers,” I ought to tell my son. He has just presented me with a bedraggled bouquet of pilfered petunias, some of them still clinging to their roots.

Bits of sand and sundered petals sift confetti patterns on the floor; I don't know whether I should grin or growl.

 

Still Michael's grimy fist thrusts forth the offering with such sweet innocence that I cannot scold him. Together, we arrange tattered blossoms in stoneware teacups. When some of the tender petals, haplessly torn from supporting stems and foliage, want to float, the boy laughs out loud and pokes them down into a tepid bath.

 

I place each makeshift vase on the kitchen windowsill, peering outside to see if any dandelions beckon in the lawn. Sure enough, several dozen clumps of unsown sunshine dot the emerald grass, each lifting spiky heads of golden fuzz from geometrically perfect leaves, dog-toothed and green.

 

My son's eyes are green too--limpidly so and trusting.

 

Do you know what flowers, Mommy really likes?” 

 

Michael follows my pointing finger to the yard. Soon the whole house is filled with dandelions. There are dandelion leis on every doorknob and dandelion nosegays in my shoes.  All the drinking glasses overflow with dandelions, and on the kitchen table sits a dandelion wreath. 

 

Catching a glimpse of myself in the reflecting sheen of the toaster oven, I wipe wispy snatches of white dandelion down from the countertops and smile. 

 

Soon Michael's father will come home from work. Already I can see the laughter in his eyes as he holds me at a scrutinizing arm’s length and taps a lilting question on my cheek.

 

“Being somebody’s mom,” I'll have to say, “means wearing dandelion garlands in your hair."