Quotes

   His birthday is approaching in a matter of weeks.  Of course, birthdays remind me of when the kids were little and so adorable. Not that they aren't now, of course, but in a different way.  I've always found it remarkable to hear any type of opinion from a being only a few years old.  Or only a number of months old, when he told his father, "Yeah, Daddy, you're not the boss around here."   When he was 3 years old, those green parkas with the fur trim were the must-have style.  His father had one, to shovel snow, do outside winter chores, and to wear while sleigh riding and building snowmen.   I bought one each for David and Marilyn.  She willingly wore hers, as a four-year old, but David balked at his, saying "It was too sticky."  I returned it to the store and when the clerk asked the reason for return I said that the owner didn't like it, that the material was too stiff.  (I clarified the language a little.)  The clerk, looking at the Size 2 coat, said, "How old is he, that he doesn't like it??"  He had just turned 3, but I knew he really didn't want to wear it, and he had given a valid  reason why.
     An early talker, he was even younger than that when he looked up from where he was playing with his cars on the floor, and announced that he didn't like Dinah Shore because she was "too magisaw."  The meaning wasn't quite as  clear that time, but I got the gist, I think. 
     When he was 28 months old, he had the extreme misfortune to be attacked by a 140 lb. pure black  German Shepherd, and hospitalized for a number of days.  He was little, weighing only about  26 lbs., and the nurses at the hospital had put him in diapers. It was the heart of winter on  a cold day in February, and when Dorothy and Gus came to visit him, they stayed while his father and I  took a break.  Dorothy hung her black faux-fur coat on the back of a chair, and somehow this triggered a reaction from him. Dorothy said the other visitors in the 4-bed ward were spellbound when what looked to be a baby stood up in his crib and delivered, in a clear voice,  a detailed account of what had happened to him, from leaving the post office to the dog's biting him and knocking him flat on his back, while standing over him, growling and taking more bites.  He ended by saying, "It wasn't my fault." 
    When he returned home, his solution, if he were ever to be in that  situation again, was that he "would flap his wings and fly away."