On walking home from dropping Girlish at school, I’m strolling along the High Street, Babe-ish in the buggy and Boyish tagging along, and I hear behind me, “Mommy, it’s an emergency! It’s an emergency!”
Boyish is potty-trained, right? But he also hates to go to the bathroom, and therefore he often finds himself desperate at the most inconvenient times. I wheel around, expecting to find him dancing on the pavement, clutching his crotch. “Do you have to go the bathroom?” I ask.
“No.”
He always says no. Then I hear it. A siren, close by. “Oh, right,” I say “you mean the siren?”
He nods.
“They're hurrying to help somebody. They’re saying, ‘Get out of the way!’”
“Who are they going to help, Mommy?”
“I surely don’t know.”
“Prob’ly somebody has a crocodile in their house.”
"Oh, my, that would be an emergency."
"Yeah."
Hey, I have recurring nightmares about alligators, and have for almost my entire life--I blame it on scary stories in my Florida early childhood. Crocodiles in the house would definitely spook me!
Posted by: Pollyanna Sunshine | September 14, 2007 at 08:35 PM