Monday, September 22, 2008

Where I Am

The boys and I loaded up our bikes yesterday and took them to a park across town.  There's a little charming bike trail near this park.  It's nice, because while I'm unloading and loading bikes, the boys can go and swing and slide.  

After I got the bikes all loaded, I thought I'd let the boys play a while longer.  I plopped myself onto a park bench and busied myself with my iPhone.  

In front of me, there was a little rocking horse.  A grandpa came along with his little toddler grandson and made him pose for many, many digital pictures on the rocking horse.  I giggled at them.  When they were finished, a grubby little girl climbed up onto the rocking horse and struck up a conversation with me.

"I want you to take my picture!" she said.

"You want me to take your picture?  Where's your mom?"

"She's over there and she doesn't have a camera."

"Well, I need to ask her permission before I can just take your picture." I really couldn't just start snapping pictures of someone else's kid.

"How come?" as we say in Iowa.

"Cuz it's against the rules for me to just take your picture.  But if you get your mom, I could snap your picture and then send it to your mom's computer?  Does Mom have a computer?"

"Yeah, she has one at our new house, but not one at our old house.  We have two houses." she put up two fingers and then smiled at them.  "Cut, cut, cut!" she said, making scissor motions with her hands.  

I laughed and then she turned the two fingers upward to me and then tucked the index finger down.  

"Oh goodness, that's not a nice finger!"  I said, stifling a laugh.

"How come?" as we say in Iowa.

"Because it's a finger we use when we're not very nice!  You should put that away."  

She tried the two fingers, palm facing out once again.  

"Those fingers are nicer.  That's a nice girl!"  I noticed that she was barefoot, playing in wood chips.  And it sunk in a little further, her totally dirty face.  She flipped me the bird again.

"Where's your mom again?  Maybe I can just take a nice picture of you right now." I said. 


1 comment:

julochka said...

that is excellent. poor kid, tho', wonder where her mom really was?