Randomness

A few notes from the gloomy stretches of SW Virginia...

A has a strange obsession with what's going on with traffic signs, directives, etc. For example, they recently put up two new traffic lights (yippee) on the main road near our house. But the lights weren't activated until a couple of weeks after they were erected. (Always fun to type that word.) And boy, did that just about drive her crazy. Every time we drove past, her little brow would furrow. "Why dey not workin' yet?" "I don't know." "Dey can't not work." (Already started on the double negatives--yes!) "Well, the men [not being sexist, all the workers were men] are trying to make them work." Delivered in a dark mutter: "Dey haf to work." And so on, until it got to the point where I started taking a back road to avoid said non-working lights because I was getting a little concerned about her mental health.

Yet our glorious town, which is evidently determined to screw with her, is now adding speed bumps to the back road. There were previously two big ones and then a set of small ones. Two days ago, they started work on the road, which elicited a great deal of alarm: "What dey doin' over dere?!" "They're adding bumps." "But why dey do dat?" "To get people to slow down." "Dat's not fair." (Since I tend to agree with this, I said nothing.) Well, this morning on the way in, there were more trucks, more orange cones (which, thanks to "Lou and Lou Safety Patrol," she calls "safety biolations"), and more workers. All of which served to make her wail, in a tone worthy of one announcing that an iceberg had hit the Titanic, "I don't know what's going ON!!" I suppose I shouldn't have laughed. Or kept laughing after the third time she said it.

Another thing: You'd think I'd have learned by now to watch what I say. Well, when it's early and I haven't had enough caffeine... I was jotting something down while driving (which: uber-safe, yes) and weaving a little, and muttered, "The police are going to take Mommy away." It took a good five minutes to talk her down from that one by assuring her that Mommy was just being silly and that no one was going to take me away and--telling, no?--that Mommy wasn't going to call the police to take A away. I did manage to refrain from noting that I'd considered it, which I think is laudable.

And yet another: Yesterday, we were walking to our car from daycare at the same time as one of A's teachers, and A yelled out to her, "You're not going to beat me, are you?" Well, you should have seen the look of alarm that crossed the woman's face. I could tell that she was trying to process a protest that no, she doesn't actually beat my child, so I said, "No, she means in your car. She's got a thing about trying to beat cars in traffic." (Back to the traffic again. I don't know what that means.) The teacher, needless to say, looked quite relieved.

But A has always had a knack for saying just the wrong thing. When she was about two, she called every man we saw "Daddy." Tell me that didn't do wonders for my reputation. And last weekend, we were on our Saturday walk when we came across a very short man walking in the opposite direction. As he drew closer, A said, "Look, there's a little boy!" Me, in a quiet voice, "No, that's just a man." A, louder: "Hello, little boy!" "Honey, hush." A, waves: "Hello, little boy!" "Little boy": glares, walks by without saying a word. A: "He's not very nice."

Finally, two words that she mangles that I find hilarious. One is that she likes to help out around the house. (Don't know where she picked that up; must be a second-generation sort of thing.) And she particularly likes to take out the plastic bottles to the recycle bin, cheerfully announcing, "I'm precycling!" I suppose that's not entirely off. The other is what she calls the fairy godmother in Cinderella: the "bery godmudda," making it sound as though she's an extra from Goodfellas.

I tell ya, it's hard to keep up. But entertaining nonetheless.