Inspired by the posts of
….
I enjoy
My “bebby” (that’s her, at age 2, in my userpic!) was, of course, the most beautiful, intelligent and sweet child in the universe. (The funny thing is that EVERY child I know also fits this description…in the parents’ minds and hearts!) But….
Once, visiting someone just around dinner-time, I warned her in the car, “Don’t eat anything there, we will go home and have dinner.” (I did not add the words, “it will spoil your appetite”…my mistake.) During the course of our visit, H wandered off inside the house, met up with the grandmother of the family, and remarked casually, “My mother has told me not to eat anything here, but I am hungry, so just give me a biscuit.” Made for a great moment, when the grandmother came out demanding to know what was wrong with the food!
From her Class III composition book: “In school we wear skirt and shit.” Yes, at that age, that was more true than she knew! She also once got concerned about a school circular warning about delayed payments by parents and came and asked, “Have you paid my feeses?” Ah, if only that was accepted currency…we would be RICH!
She was normally a very gregarious child, and would share her toys very willingly; and I had just finished boasting about this to our visitors when there was a HUGE howl from inside, the visitors’ child came out in tears, with my daughter, her toys tucked under her armpits, coming out, yelling, “ I don’t like you! Go away!….When is this bad girl going home?” (Well, at least she didn’t bite the child, like my niece used to do!)
We took her to the shops once, when she wanted to stay at home and play. Then we had to leave her in the car for a little while, when we were going from shop to shop, and when we came back she was very angry and wouldn’t speak to us. “But we wanted to be with you,” we told her. “Yes, that’s why I am angry… you weren’t with me, were you?” she said, with unassailable logic.
“She doesn’t eat this,” I would say to someone, and would have to avoid their twinkling eyes while my daughter polished all of “this” off greedily. I once made the mistake of asking her, “But you don’t eat this at home!” “You don’t make it delicious like this,” was her prompt reply, made so loudly that everyone around could hear it.
After she had accepted a second and a third biscuit from someone, I gently prompted her, “What should you say?” Prompt reply: “ Do you have another one?”
She went to a birthday party, gave a gift to the birthday girl, and having tucked the hanky they gave her under her belt, demanded, “where is my return gift?” On being told that the hanky WAS the return gift, her response was, “Why don’t you give some fun stuff to us, and give the hankies to our mothers?”
But by far the most memorable incident was when (when she was in Class X, I think) her friends’ parents showed up on our doorstep at about 8.30 pm, asking us where H and their daughter were. We were, of course totally ignorant, trustingly thinking they were at another friend’s home. It transpired that they wanted to try how beer tasted, so they bought a bottle, and since the terrace of our apartments was locked, they had actually climbed from the seventh floor landing on to the drainpipe on the outer wall, and up the drainpipe to the terrace , bottle, glasses and all, in the dark….I still shudder when I think of what could have happened! I am amazed that the other girl’s parents are even talking to us, all these years later….but I suppose THEY must have faced some incidents of their own!
This is apart from all the usual loud remarks of “Why is that man’s nose so big?”, “Isn’t this the restaurant where you said the food is too expensive?” and “That lady is wearing a dirty blouse!” which all children unfailingly make…
Oh my bebby….thank you so much,
Happy birthday to