MAKE A KID LAUGH!
Maybe it helps if he is your grandson, but to see and hear a child really enjoy a good laugh, and a continued one, is a special joy for an oldster such as I.
Well over a year go ,when we were visiting the Crawford branch of our grandsons in Hampton, Va., William – the middle one of the three boys – about four years of age, I think, at the time, asked me to tell him a story.
One came to mind and, even as I started, I wondered that it might be too advanced for the kid. I’d best be ready, I thought, to explain it.
“Living here on the coast, as you do you see great many gulls flying about over the boats and the water’s edge, don‘t you?
They all look pretty much alike, don’t they?
But, they’re not. Long ago, thousands of them ...maybe more’n that gathered in a big cloud of gulls up over Pennsylvania, Maryland and New Jersey and flew round and round being joined by more and more birds, ‘till it looked like the sky was getting too full. The Chief Gull, told them to divide into two groups and which they did instantly .You know how fast gulls can move don’t you? And – when they did there was a huge fluttery sound: ‘Bah-rrooom!’ Oh, I tell you it must have been heard all, well most everywhere!
Now, when he told hem to fly south – half of them were to fly way out over the sea - the big. roomy Atlantic Ocean. The other flock was to fly all the way down over the waters of the Chesapeake Bay.
Half of them are called “sea gulls” - the ones that flew out over the open sea! And the other who flew down the Chesapeake Bay are what we call “ bay-gulls!”
Which do you like best “Seagulls” or “Bay gulls?”
Grandson William was right there with it and laughing up a storm: “You wanted me to think you were talking about gulls that fly and you were really talking about ones we eat! Bay-gull! ” (And, he seemed to pause and listen to the sound of the word as he repeated it )”...bay-gulls - bay-gulls - ba-gels!'
Don't underrate the kids! They know more than our might think they do. Just the other day, while visiting us here in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia – asked me, and I could see the teasing, giggle-glint in his eyes, if I knew where bagels came from.
We both had a good laugh together all over again, a full year after the foolish fact. Oh, its good to hear a kid laugh! It's good for an old man to laugh, too, along with the youngster. We will each live longer, and better because of it.
A.L.M. October 10, 2002 [c483wds]
