If Your Pictures Aren't Good Enough, You Aren't Close Enough.

I stopped at ReStore -- one of Minot's many thrift stores -- before work this morning to pick out something new to decorate the office with. I usually go for stuffed animals or unusual and cheap pieces, and in their toy section I came across Mickey Mouse wearing an Indiana Jones outfit. Looked really cool and I was walking up front to pay for it along with books by Robert Capa (I knew he was a 20th century war photographer, but I didn't know he had written a book -- but I did know he said today's title) and Nobel laureate Selma Lagerlöf. So I'm headed to the register and there's a little boy sitting in the front of his mom's shopping cart who said "Mickey Mouse". Really, who doesn't recognize Mickey Mouse?


So I stopped for a few minutes and seeing the kid's eyes light up like they all do at his age (maybe three or four) I wondered aloud with the best Mickey voice I had whether he should go home with him instead. Mom was certainly in favor of that ... I just paid for it first because I expect she thought I had already done so. So I got it for four bits and got to the parking lot just as they were leaving and offered it to him. It does sound like Mickey is going to a good home. Besides, I've got way too many stuffed animals and just stuff where I am as it is! Somehow the clarinet Sarah's been using to play in band went missing and we just found out this morning -- she's got to find that because I don't want to pay a few hundred bucks to Longfellow for it!


Last night at home we took in the latest episode of Once Upon A Time titled "Page 23"; I was going to put that in the title today before the events of this morning. Sarah and Jeffrey both had projects, clothes-folding, and Reading At Home to do before their Spring Picture Day. Gah! When I was growing up we only got one picture in the fall and didn't see that for a few months. Now the time is down to weeks -- sometimes we even see the photos in the same month they're taken! And Sarah, who also lost ... from the description I'm reading about human teeth, one of her upper left incisors just before I picked her and Jeffrey up at my in-laws' last night. And she's still got it, even thought the Tooth Fairy "paid" her a visit last night because I couldn't find the thing!


And if you're reading that and I've just shattered a childhood belief, please forgive me. It doesn't take Sarah and Jeffrey long to figure out when we're trying to convince them of something that just isn't so ... or in the words of the talking horse called Houynyhyms (dang, I spelled this right without having to look it up?) from Jonathan Swift's novel Gulliver's Travels, saying that which is not. Which sometimes when you're parents you have to do, but you don't want to do it with malicious intent. This is something I never quite understood until I became a parent myself -- I guess part of me still doesn't for I want to believe I'm a basically honest person. Whether you treat me like I am or not, I will remain one.


David