I spent the weekend at Laura's cabin in upstate New York with two of my grandchildren, Regina and Atticus. We left Friday morning - it's a four hour drive - and came back Monday afternoon, so that's what? about 72 hours all together. And what stands out from all that time is not the beauty of the lake, or the quiet uncomplicated life. Nope, it's the conversations with the kids.

One was the retelling of how Regina's father recently ordered Chinese food to be delivered to their house by taxicab. (Atticus was spending the weekend). Kevin couldn't use his truck, as they explained, because it was full of rhubard. Now, Laura and I had heard the story earlier and had wondered what was he doing with a truckload of rhubard, but had accepted it as certain, didn't even question it. After all, it is rhubard season right now. At the lake, we dug a little deeper, "What was your father doing with all that rhurbard?" "You, know" Regina explained, "he needs it for work." Now, Laura and I were really puzzled. Rhubard for work? "Yeah, well it sounds like rhubard"......Laura and I looked at each other and said it together....REBAR...they mean rebar, of course. It makes a lot more sense that a mason would have a truckload of rebar, but then maybe someone had too much rhubard so they gave it to him. Could happen.

Another conversation had Regina roaring in her seat. Atticus was telling about a boy in high school that came to school with a dead squirrel stapled to a Yankee baseball cap, the squirrel's tail flopping in the wind. Now, that's something you don't hear everyday. Then Regina told about her class seeing a movie called "Here Comes Puberty", the boys separate from the girls. Regina said the boys version only lasted a few minutes, but the girls was longer. One girl felt faint and had to go to the nurse to lay down. Then each girl got a "goodie bag" of supplies, which I guess they promptly opened. Regina said the item looked "like an old ladies diaper" and some more girls went down for the count.

That's always been the way with our family...the kids provide the most amusement. It started with Jer. He had been punished for using bad words, common swear type, so he invented words to call peole. He had "ash tray" which was good, "dog smell", even better, but my favorite was "air hole". Now that's original. I even used that at IBM, one guy really got to me and I called him an air hole, and he told his manager and his manager just looked at him like he was nuts. "What's an air hole?" he asked, like it might be a new scientific wonder.

Atticus had other names for people...her cousin Rachael was FooFee and Liz was Wren. Jer had named me Loggie Linds, which became Loggie, which became Linnie. More than one of them has called me Ninnie, with the L a harder letter to say. And it wasn't just words...sometimes they asked for strange things. One Christmas all Rachael wanted was "a monkey with clean hands". Maria had to search , but she found one with light pink palms - just what Rachael had wanted.

Recently, Henry discovered my hamper, a dark small closet under the stairs in the bathroom. Playing hide and seek, Solomon and Henry hid there. Henry renamed the hamper, the "Underwear Cellar", probably because it was dark like a cellar, and had dirty underwear in it.
Sabra said he now calls their cellar, the underwear cellar.

I can go back even further. One time Paul came home from school and looked annoyed. He said the teacher had asked them to name birds and he had said the "bra bird" and the teacher looked surprised and said she never heard of that one. It took me a while, but I figured it out. He meant tit mouse. When Maria's class was covering monies, Maria told the class she was going to bring in some money that her grandfather had from the war. So, she took it to class and presented it as "Peen" money. Again, the teacher was surprised, looked at the coins and corrected Ria, saying you mean "European". Maria never forgot that and every now and then would say how "we" embarrassed her by letting her go to school thinking it was Peen money.

Art Linkletter knew kids were funny, all you had to do was get them talking. The section of his show called "Kids say the darnest things" was one of my mother's favorite TV shows. The kids certainly had me entertained this weekend.