My Beloved and I had our four year old grandson Thomas today while his parents were at the Sharks game. In the middle of lunch, Thomas looked up from his meal and said with a solemn expression on his face, “I know Duke is dead, but maybe he’ll come back next week.” What a blessing he is!
On a completely different note, when the the three of us were in the car headed home I got a bit bored of a very repetitious song he’d been singing, so I decided to make up a silly song on the spot to distract him from the one he was repeating. I wanted it to be as silly as possible so it would crack him up, and easy for him to learn. This is what I came up with:
“If I drink stinky soup
From a cup
I might get sick
And throw it all up!
Blehhhuhhhaaaahhh!”
I sang it once and exaggerated the last line as though I was… (uh, what’s the polite word for puking?). He and My Beloved exploded into laughter. Of course she caught herself, and in a scolding voice said, “Papa!” But Thomas obviously has better taste in songs than she and yelled, “Papa! Sing it again!” So, being the good Papa that I am, I belted it out again, with even more emphasis on the last line.
Each time I finished he was convulsed in laughter and yelled, “Sing it again.” Having once been a little boy myself –though very long ago–I knew the repetition he sought wasn’t just for the entertainment value, he was learning more of the song each time. So I kept going, singing the same words but in different tones, volumes, accents, etc. Soon he was singing along with me.
When we got home I sat in my special Papa chair and he sat on my knee. I suggested that he sing the song and that My Beloved make a video of it and send it to them while they were at the game. She went along with it and texted the clip to them.
When they saw the video, their text to us read: “Oh. My. God.”
I replied, “No need to thank me. I was just doing my job as Papa.”
With Love,
Russ
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Russ Towne's A Grateful Man 