While I sat in the reception area of my doctor’s office, a woman rolled an elderly man in a wheelchair into the room. As she went to the receptionist’s desk, the man sat there, alone and silent. Just as I was thinking I should make small talk with him, a little boy slipped off his mother’s lap and walked over to the wheelchair. Placing his hand on the man’s, he said,” I know how you feel. My mom makes me ride in the stroller, too.”
*****
Out bicycling one day with my eight-year-old granddaughter, Carolyn, I got a little wistful. “In ten years,” I said, “you’ll want to be with your friends and you won’t go walking, biking, and swimming with me like you do now.”
Carolyn shrugged. “In ten years, you’ll be too old to do all those things anyway.”
******
Working as a pediatric nurse, I had the difficult assignment of giving immunization shots to children..
One day, I entered the examining room to give four-year-old Lizlie her needle. “No, no, no!” she screamed.
“Lizzie,” scolded her mother, “that’s not polite behavior.”
With that, the girl yelled even louder, “No, thank you! No, thank you!”
******
Just before I was deployed to Iraq, I sat my eight-year-old son down and broke the news to him. “I’m going to be away for a long time,” I told him. “I’m going to Iraq.”
“Why?” he asked. “Don’t you know there’s a war going on over there?”
*****
Paul Newman founded the Hole in the Wall Gang Camp for children stricken with cancer, AIDS, and blood diseases. One afternoon, he and his wife, Joanne Woodward, stopped by to have lunch with the kids.
A counselor at a nearby table, suspecting the young patients wouldn’t know Newman was a famous movie star, explained, “That’s the man who made this camp possible. Maybe you’ve seen his picture on his salad dressing bottle.” Blank stares. “Well, you’ve probably seen his face on his lemonade carton.”
An eight-year-old girl perked up. “How long was he missing?”
*****
