WHITE-WALKER: Any old pair

Niagara Gazette

October 02, 2007 12:42 pm

— Why waste your money seeing a sidesplitting movie, tuning into a weekly sit-com or reading a hopefully humorous weekly newspaper column, when all you have to do is surround yourself with your family’s kids who are five years old and under, and there you’ll have it — lively free entertainment. I know, I know, everybody thinks their own little ones are the cutest, smartest, wittiest things around and golly gum drops, that’s how it should be. But once those very same cute, smart, witty kids hit puberty, who knows how long before adults will again get a chuckle out of them — the women will have finished menopause and the men will be dealing with prostate problems.
Ethan, a wee character in our family who’s my sister’s grandson, has highly expressive talking eyes, little outstretched waving arms with hands that accompany his talking, and he has a vocabulary that would rival a Supreme Court Justice. I swear little kids attend school in heaven before they ascend down here on earth. Well, Grandmother Mary offered to take Ethan school clothes shopping, but her daughter Tara informed her that all her little tyke needed were school sneakers.
“Now Mom, just pick out any old cheap pair because what does a five year old know about sneakers? Believe me, he won’t know the difference.”
Tara is a cracker-jack court reporter and no dummy, but who could prove it after that remark.
Grandmother and grandson entered the shoe store and immediately Mister Won’t-Know-The-Difference made a quantum leap toward the Sketchers.
“Now Grandma,” he demonstrated as he picked up a sneaker, “these shoes have an air flow and a real quality arch that makes for easy walking, and if you buy them for me, when I take them off my mom won’t say, ‘Phew Ethan, do your feet ever stink.’
The store manager practically fell off his ladder, and a near-by customer immediately swapped her child’s pair of Keds for the Sketchers.
“Hey kid,” yelled down the big boss, get yourself some working papers and I’ll pass you off as some midget with a cute baby face.”
“You’re out of luck,” called back my sister. “He drives a tricycle and still takes a nap.”
Ethan didn’t seem impressed with the job offer. “Now Grandma,” he continued “when we get home Mama is probably going to say, ‘Now Ethan, those sneakers are nothin’ but junk, pure junk.’ She always says that when I want something.”
Later Mary confronted her daughter. “Honey, why do you always tell Ethan things are nothing but junk?”
“Mother, when I say that he loses interest and doesn’t give me a hassle to buy everything he sees. It always works, but now…”
Recently Tara was explaining to her husband at the breakfast table about a recurring dream she keeps having about moving into a bigger home. Of course Ethan was listening, kids always do when you think they’re preoccupied with something else.
“I know, Mama,” he sympathized, and with his little thumb waving back and forth, he shook his little head, “this here place is nothin’ but trailer trash.”
Some trailer trash. They live in a 3,200 hundred square foot, $300,000 home. Tara is taking those Sketchers back and buying a no-name brand. Just how many status symbols does one little kid need? For starters, none would be nice.
Karen White-Walker is a Wilson resident. Her column appears every Tuesday.

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