Poe Boy

In which our Hero has some company over the long weekend

I was sitting and was reading on a labour day receding In the silence of my office high up on the second floor, When my picking at my stocking was interrupted by a knocking A stranger sounding tick-tick-tocking than I was wont to hear before. Puzzled I went to the threshold and carefully I cracked the door To someone very near the floor.

Honestly the last I’d heard was my parents heading off to visit somebody or other and I was going to just mind my own business. But clearly someone was home, and inexplicably, someone… small. Not sure what makes me know that, perhaps the force of the knock or maybe it’s just the acoustics of the knock at adult chest level versus one at knee level, but on the flipside, But seeing as there are no kids that small in the house, it seemed worth answering.

And at my door was a cousin’s 3-year-old. With a clear plastic bag containing a cob of—

“Corn!” said the baby. Well, okay, she was in a hurry, so it didn’t really have an R, but it’s hard to miss what she’s saying when she’s offering you food. I accepted the offering and she went scurrying back down the stairs.

I enjoyed a cooled-enough-to-give-to-a-three-year-old corn on the cob and then headed down to find out what was going on. Which boiled down to a very simple case of “she followed us home.” Actually, it was more a case of my parents, as they were leaving, asked her if she wanted to come with. And every once in a while, one of the babies says yes.

It’s funny to me. mostly because for most of my life, I’ve been the one with oversight responsibilities for the babies. But this time (and often with this girl) it’s my father trailing in her wake from room to room. Which is just kind of funny because I can’t really remember seeing him do that much. And because I recognize the slightly amused/slightly embarrassed look on his face because he’s enjoying watching the kid just be.

I took my cob to the kitchen and was pouring myself a drink, when herself thundered in on impossibly stompy legs. She saw what I was up to and gave me her best “I’ll have what he’s having, Bartender,” which is to say:

“Joosh?”

“You want some?” I asked her, and she nodded.

Dug into the cabinets and was a little surprised to find no plastic cups at all. So I got a very small glass one, poured her OJ shot and handed her the glass. I guess she was expecting a plastic cup too, because it wobbled and waved till she got a grip, and she seemed as startled as me.

“Nooooo,” she moaned.

“Yeah, maybe we’d better find you a plastic cup after all,” I agreed, taking back the glass that she wasn’t drinking from anyway. And when I did turn up a plastic cup (being used as a flour scoop) she was much happier with her drink.