kids

Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater

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‘The dirty little downside of belonging to a big happy family’

I have this very good friend, Jim, who is astonished that anyone could have grown up in a house with only one bathroom. It’s a good thing he doesn’t read my blog, because he would be shocked (shocked!) to hear that not only did we Henrys share a bathroom — we also shared our bathwater.

(Of course, he told me once he shares a shower with his cat, so there’s that.)

Anyway. Back to the Henrys and their sharing of the suds.

Those of you who do read my blog (bless you many times over) know that I am the proud member of a large, happy family. A large happy family who did a lot of sharing.

We shared popcorn in front of the TV, we shared (sort of) the toys in the toy box, we shared seats in the car. (See ‘He’s Breathing My Air’ for how that worked out.) Of course we shared bedrooms. My parents (natch) shared Mom and Dad’s Room, my three brothers shared The Boys’ Room, and I shared The Girls’ Room with my Favorite Only Younger Sister Laura. She and I shared so nicely that she even tried to move on to cohabit my dorm room when I went to college. (It’s a pretty good story, called ‘Larry and the Nose Holes’; you might like to read it after this one.)

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Out of the mouths of babes

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‘The Child says (and writes) the darnedest things’

Ouch. It’s Tuesday. Which means I’ve got to get a wiggle on and come up with a story to tell. I was going to regale you with tales from my teen years honing my writing (and phone-answering, address-stamping, and odd-job-doing) skills at the Carlyle Union Banner.

I’ve already regaled you with tales of The Dude’s and The Child’s fabulous summer jobs (see ‘They didn’t do this for fun, you know’), and thought I’d give myself a turn, so to speak.

But I just now waved bye-bye to the last of my Fourth of July Weekend houseful, one of whom (The Child, pictured above during a previous Fourth of July Weekend) inspired a completely different bloggy direction.

She and her bevy of beautiful girlfriends and The Dude and I were sitting around post-beach, sipping a few cocktail hour cocktails. (Oh, in case you are horrified at the thought of the pipsqueak pictured at the top of this post having access to a cocktail, rest assured that she and her friends are indeed old enough to vote both ‘yes’ to a drink and ‘no’ to a Trump.)

Anyway. The Child tells her friends that I make the best gin and tonics. I modestly reply that, shucks, I’ve just had plenty of practice. Then I go on to say, “Speaking of which, once when you were little, like two*, you were rattling a couple of toy blocks around in a plastic cup. When I asked what you were doing, you said ‘I’m playing Gin and Tonic.'” Gosh. Maybe I’ve had a little too much practice. Continue reading