Sparkle Girl Goes to a Party

Sparkle Girl was going to a girl party with dolls. No boys invited.

My job was to take Doobins to the playground before Sparkle Girl and their mom left for the party so that he wouldn't be around to ask questions for which there would be no satisfactory answers.

As plans go, it was perfectly serviceable. Doobins likes to go to the playground.

Transitions, though, can trying for him. He often has trouble adjusting to the idea of doing something other than what he is already doing. So I'm used to having him shout, "No! Never!" as we head out to the car, even when we're on our way to do something he likes.

Once he is in the car and strapped into his car seat, though, he usually leaves the past behind and is ready for whatever comes next.

On this particular day, though, that was not the case. As we drove toward the playground, he kept saying that he wanted to go back home to Mommie. We stopped at a traffic light. A right turn would have put us back on course to his house. The light changed, and I drove straight through the intersection toward the playground.

With Doobins and Sparkle Girl, I spend a lot of time stopping them from following their impulses.

"You want to run across a parking lot without looking? I don't think so."

"You want to poke Sparkle Girl in the face with a stick? I don't think so."

"You want to slide down the slide headfirst on your back and land on your head? I don't think so."

When it's a matter of "safety first," I feel fine thwarting their desires.

Other no's seem solid or disposable, depending on my mood.

"You want a treat before you've eaten breakfast? I don't think so."

"You want a treat before you've eaten breakfast? Sure, be my guest. Get me one of those peanut-butter cups, too, while you're at it."

Every now and then, though, I wonder whether I'm doing the right thing when I quash one of their impulses. Such was the case this time. Doobins didn't seem as if he were being belligerent just to be belligerent. He just seemed to be a little guy who needed to be with his Mommie.

He was clearly communicating that to me, and I wasn't listening. Being a kid must be maddening at times, I thought. That didn't stop me from continuing on to the playground in hopes that the slides and swings would capture his attention.

Instead, we ended up sitting on the curb at the edge of the parking lot. In similar circumstances, anger has pushed at the back of my eyeballs. This time, quiet sadness was what I felt.

I gave his mom a call. She and Sparkle Girl hadn't left for the party yet. It didn't seem as if he was being a knucklehead, I said. He just wanted to be with her. We agreed to swap kids.

Doobins was quiet on the ride home. At last, we were heading in the right direction.

Backseat Driver

Doobins had been lobbying to go to the library for several days. A time to do that had not opened up. In the middle of a recent Saturday afternoon, it did.

So, we got shoes and coats on Doobins and Sparkle Girl and climbed into the car. If I wanted to take the shortest route to the library, the thing to do would have been to turn the car around. But, sometimes, when the car is headed in the wrong direction, it just seems like less trouble to drive down to the end of the block and turn there. That’s the way it felt this time.

I had just started down the street, when Doobins, whose car seat is directly behind me, said, “Hey! Hey! This isn’t the way to the library.” (Upon reflection, my mind might have added the “Hey! Hey!” part later for effect. But I’m sure about the “This isn’t the way to the library” part.)

I assured him that this way would get us there, too.

Ever since I have known Sparkle Girl and Doobins, Sparkle Girl has had an excellent sense of space and direction. If I take an alternate route somewhere, she might ask whether we’re still going where we’re going, just in case I have changed plans without keeping her fully informed.

And, as we drive around, she might comment that this is the way to her cousins’ house after we turn onto a different street. She’s always right.

But I had never heard Doobins say anything that indicated he had taken note of how we get from one place to another. When I told the story to my friend Mike, he said that I now have a new backseat driver.

True. The day may come when I wish that Doobins would keep his opinions on how to get somewhere to himself. But, on this particular Saturday, I was really happy to witness him showing signs of a growing understanding of how our world is put together.

I missed Doobins’ jump from scribbling to representation drawing by a few hours. Doobins has always been a really good scribbler. Like Sparkle Girl, he has a good color sense. But, until a couple of weeks ago, he had never drawn pictures with identifiable subjects.

Then, one day, he was expressing frustration to his mother that he couldn’t draw something.

Sure, he could, she said.

She gave him a couple of pointers, something clicked, and he spent the next couple of hours drawing one picture after another, pausing only long enough to call out something to the effect of, “Woman, bring me another sheet of paper!”

It was a mild day, and, later, he and Sparkle Girl went outside and drew on the sidewalk. When I came over after work, he showed me the bridge he had drawn on the sidewalk. A fine bridge it was.

Going from incoherent scribbles to building a sturdy bridge in a single day. That’s quite a day.

Thank you, Mr. Transou

Unlike Doobins, who is routinely called upon to don armor and face such tangible enemies as camel crickets in the basement, most of my battles of good vs. evil take place inside my head.

The other day I was driving up a hill when I looked in the rearview mirror and saw the face of a driver so close behind me that I saw nothing of the hood of his car. He was perhaps 18. The bill of his baseball cap was pointed in the right direction but it was askew.

As we climbed the hill, he kept turning the wheel of his car first to the left then to the right and back as if he were thinking about passing me on one side or the other. That was not a possibility. He would drop back marginally and then pull right back up again.

This was not someone thoughtlessly driving too closely without regard for the need to keep a safe distance. This was someone pretending that he was in a NASCAR race.

After someone hit my car on the right side a while back, it was declared a total loss. So that gave me the liberty to consider stepping on the brakes and letting his car hit the back of mine.

No good could come of this, of course. With someone foolish enough to do what he was doing, no telling what he would do if he smashed his precious car. When I turned left at the top of the hill and saw that he turned behind me, I pulled to the side of the street.

He raced past and immediately turned down a residential street. It’s one of those streets that don’t lead anywhere else. So, it’s quite possible that he parked his car seconds after passing me.

I was so angry that, as I drove on home, I imagined coming back later and keying his car. By the time I got home, I had remembered that life would take care of justice without me. Sooner or later, he was going to wreck his car or pull that stunt on someone considerably meaner than I am.

That helped. But the incident stayed with me enough that I got wound up again when I brought it up with a friend that night.

The next morning, His Dogness and I were out at 5:30, which is about the time that my newspaperman delivers the paper.

Back in the days when I had parties at my house and stayed up until the wee hours, several of us were sitting in the grass in the front yard once when the newspaper landed next to us. That’s when we decided it was probably time to call it a night.

After I gave up giving parties, I didn’t see the paper delivered for some years. Now that His Dogness can no longer make it though the night without going out at least once - when we go out three times, I call it a three-dog night - we are sometimes out when the newspaperman turns the corner and heads up the street. When that happens, I wave. I presume that he waves back but I cannot say for sure because it is dark and I cannot see through his windows.

The morning after the encounter with Skewed-Cap Man, we were in front of Mr. Whitfield’s house when the newspaperman turned the corner. I decided to wait until he threw Mr. Whitfield’s paper into his yard so that I could stick it behind his door before His Dogness and I headed on around back.

I waved and watched Mr. Whitfield’s paper sail over the car and land at my feet. The car pulled over to the curb and stopped. What’s this? Something new. The newspaperman got out of his car and asked me if I was the man who lived next door.

Yes, I said, Kim Underwood.

Ervin Transou, he said.

It was a name I knew from sending a holiday check the past few years. I thanked him for the excellent service. We shook hands. A couple more words were exchanged. Mostly, though, that was it.

He handed me my paper and drove off. His Dogness and I walked toward the back of the house.

The exchange made me really happy. I don’t know all of why. But I know part of it.

Taking His Dogness out is not something that I mind. He’s not doing it to vex me. It’s just something that needs to be done. That said, it can be a struggle to get up and out in the night, and, once I’m out, I often spend most of my time there telling myself how great it’s going to feel to climb back under the covers.

And here was a bonus experience that couldn’t have happened if I had been asleep in my bed.

Here’s another thing. When I was a kid, I had a paper route. It gave me an appreciation for how hard it can be to get up every single day. And my newspaperman has been doing just that for quite some time. So it was nice to shake hands with the man who makes it possible for me to start my day the way I like to start it – reading the paper with a cup of coffee.

As His Dogness and I walked through the back yard, the incident with the man following too closely came to mind. I thought about how angry that had made me and how much I enjoyed meeting Mr. Transou and that, in my own internal battle of good vs. evil, doing a better job of shrugging off pointless anger and focusing on the unexpected treats that life brings is definitely the way to go.