<p>I was driving on a field trip and one of the third grade girls announced that the music teacher had been having unprotected sex. When they all quit giggling one of them explained that Mrs. Smith was pregnant. </p>
<p>"It ain't broke - it just lacks duct tape." Attributed to all of the science kids out there. (This is a favorite among the science olympiad engineering event students.)</p>
<p>When my son was about 7 years old my MIL called. He answers the phone & I can hear him talking to someone so I went down the hall to do something. All of a sudden I hear him YELLING, "Mom, it's Grandma (insert last name here), do you want to talk to her or will it make you too nervous?" Boy was it hard to get on the phone and just talk to her like nothing happened. Still cracks me up when I think about it.</p>
<p>Here's two kid tales (not as unseemly as my last one...or rather, unseemly but less seamy - or is it less steamy? -- way)</p>
<p>Two of my children were like vacuum cleaners when they were little. From the time they learned to crawl until they were about three, anything in their path ended up in their mouths. Our D's biggest culinary triumph happened at age 2.5 when she was caught sucking on the half of a very dead, very shriveled gecko -- this she revealed to us at a dinner party after the hostess kept cajoling her to open her mouth and spit out whatever it was she was chewing on. D casually opened her mouth and stuck out her tongue. When the woman saw the gecko, she screwed up her face in serious scrutiny trying to make out what the thing was. When she realized what it was, her face contorted into a kind of hysterical disbelief before she began screaming. Thankfully she didn't faint. </p>
<p>Not to be out done by his S, a few years later I walked into the livingroom and found my husband stroking the throat of our S, then three. When I inquired what was going on, ny husband said that S had swallowed a penny and it had gotten kind of stuck in his throat. I said "S, you swallowed a penny?" and he shook his head and said, "Yes, but it didn't go down as easy as the dimes..."</p>
<p>On a different note, has anyone noticed how tv newscasters these days almost look like "robots" - they all look the same, move the same, talk the same, and have that same toothy, tight smile. Or is it me? I watched tv for the first time in many moons the other day and felt as though I'd entered the Twilight Zone or the Stepford Wives...very mega-plastic, very creepy.</p>
<p>Nobody else may find these phrases funny but I thought they were hysterical.</p>
<p>My H works in the film & tv biz and is always dealing with shallow, crass, horrible people. Over the years, he has hit on a few descriptive phrases that really stuck in my memory.</p>
<p>A horrible agent with no soul = "Cancer in Cole Haan shoes."</p>
<p>His agent, who had terrible style= "He looks like the DA of Teheran."</p>
<p>Now you know what I like curmudgeon so much. I am married to a curmudgeon!!</p>
<p>I miss this thread. It gave me a number of very good laughs....so in an effort to revive it, a brief on yesterday's conversation that occurred while entertaining students from Papua New Guinea (who happened to be 7th Day adventists). </p>
<p>A discussion of the church came up and the Christian tendency toward missionization...one student asked my (reluctant) church-going 14 year old S what he thought about all this. He replied that he wasn't even sure he believed in God but that "My Mom won't let me be an athiest until I turn sixteen." (when his older brother stopped going to chuch...)</p>
<p>Thanks for reviving the thread Crash. I don't know how funny this is but It tickled me. This evening, DD (age 13) walked up and said "Mom said I have to tell you this. I was thinking and I had this great thought so I wrote it down: Isn't it odd that in society today it's cool to be different. So now everyone is doing their best to be different from everyone else and in doing so, making themselves the same." </p>
<p>I said, "That's very profound." She said, "Yeah, Mom said it was deep." I replied, "It's really hard to work into a conversation though." She smiled and said, "Yeah, you wouldn't believe how hard it is."</p>
<p>doddsdad: LOL! :) Your daughter sounds a lot like me at that age.</p>
<p>Thanks TYG! I take that as high praise.</p>
<p>Crash, I meant to comment that I liked your story! We had a similar discussion around the dinner table recently. I had not thought about an age requirement for atheism though. I like that!</p>
<p>Oh MAN!!! I didn't know there was a sinner's alley happy hour until today. Last month I learned there is a Sinner's Alley choir and I missed the auditions. I need to spend more time on CC.</p>
<p>Well, my pitiful contribution is about the time we took the kids to see A Christmas Carol at Ford's Theater here in DC--they run it every year. Youngest D was about 5 or 6--her first trip to the theater. Being the pedantic prig that I am, I wanted to place the event in its cultural context so I asked her if she knew who Abraham Lincoln was. She said yes. I said "Well this is the theater where he was shot." She seemed very interested and asked me if I had been there that night!</p>
<p>No....I was busy rolling bandages for the Civil War wounded.</p>
<p>dcmom3 - That was good. I guess I was rolling bandages with you because I get those kind of comments all the time...the "in your day, Mom, were there telephones?" or the "Did you have TV when you were little? How about...can openers."</p>
<p>Now I must admit, I do remember the milkman delivering milk to our house - he put it in a metal box right outside our front door. And our first TV was black and white (I even can remember watching the Andy Devine show and having popcorn every Sunday night while we watched the Walt Disney show.)</p>
<p>Crash-
Wow. Andy Devine. Now there's a person I haven't thought about in a millenium or 2!!. Can you picture him on TV nowadays?? Well gollee. How about Howdy Doody with Bob Smith and Clarabelle and Princess Ticklefeather and ... uh oh... someone or other with the last name Northsoutheastwest. And we had a babysitter who would always want to watch the Sat. Night Fights-- specifically Haystacks Calhoun. And ooooh-- the first time we saw the NBC Peacock tail in COLOR to let us know that the show coming on was being broadcast in color. Wowee.</p>
<p>The Beatles on Ed Sullivan. I was in second grade. The black and white TV was in Mom and Dad's room.</p>
<p>Alu-
You child. I was in 5th grade when the Beatles were on Sullivan. I seem to remember it being a pleasant change from the sadness of the JFK assasination earlier that year, and the air raid drills we had where we had to sit in the hall with our head under our arms. Like that would protect us from a nuclear bomb.</p>
<p>
[quote]
someone or other with the last name Northsoutheastwest
[/quote]
You may be thinking of Princess Summerfall Winterspring.</p>
<p>"John (Sorry, girls, he's married.)"</p>
<p>mootmom-
Yes thank you for clarifying. I thought it was another princess... Oh well, it's late, and my brain has already gone to bed.</p>
<p><em>edit</em> Here's another piece of trivia. Buffalo Bob Smith actually owned (and ran) the liquor store in town. His brother, Vic Smith, owned the shoestore across the street. Most of the kids in the peanut gallery (including my brother, I was too young at the time) came from Vic Smith's shoestore. He had one of those cool xray machines where you'd stick your feet in and see your bones. Too bad we'll now all get cancer and our feet will fall off.</p>
<p>And I am embarassed to admit that most of the Howdy Doody caracters came to our elementary school call festival every year. You'd think I could remember all their names.. :(</p>
<p>Children, children- I was a sophomore in HS for the Beatles on Ed Sullivan!And H didn't have a TV until age 13! (Yes, he walked 5 miles through the snow barefoot to get to school, etc. etc.) * but we <em>look</em> young :D*</p>
<p>jmmom-
Whoa. Old fart on the premises :) What are you doing up typing at 4:40 in the morning?? I gues yo +old+people have to get up a lot to take care of business. :D</p>
<p>Oh yes, I knew there was a reason I kept tuning in to this thread, oh yes....</p>
<p>So jmmom, did you swoon for the Beatles on Ed Sullivan? You were old enough to think maybe you had a chance with one of them: who did you lust after? (I was a fan of Topo Gigio and that guy who spun the plates on the tall poles, myself...)</p>
<p>Oh yeah, and jym626, isn't it spelled "olde farte"? (Ooops, gotta be careful, I was doing a women's sprint-triathlon a couple years ago and one young woman and her mother asked which group my swim cap put me in; when I said, "the olde fartes", they looked at each other and stared at me and said, "That is SO rude," and walked away. It never occurred to me that my favorite term of endearment would offend them. Oh well, their problem.)</p>
<p>Crash, I remember a milkman delivery too--glass bottles in a little metal carryall. And a fruit and vegetable man who came to our street in the summer with a truck. My mother referred to him as a huckster.</p>
<p>And yes, jym, we had "duck and cover" too in our school. I grew up in Atlantic City, coastal town, with air raid sirens to test the civil defense system. This was in the early 60's! No color-coded system to tell you how paranoid to be, but somebody (Cubans, Russians) were likely to invade so build your family an underground shelter.</p>