by Kathy Brasby | Oct 28, 2014 | Stories
I was more puzzled than miffed when our teenage son pounded on our bedroom door at midnight accompanied by the sound of a wailing baby.
“He won’t stop crying,” he said in a tone that would have shoved the baby in my arms if only he could.
Our son had brought his baby home from school that day complete with a pastel diaper bag, bottle, diapers and toys.
We’d taken pictures and even named the little guy.
But only our son had the key.
This baby was a mechanical doll from his family living class and it was programmed to cry randomly. Only the caretaker with the key could try to address his needs.
Did it need a new diaper? A bottle? Burping?
The caretaker used a magnetic wrist band to access the baby’s data bank before offering solutions.
This all sounds a little crazy but not nearly as crazy as being awakened at midnight.
I have some experience with flesh-and-blood babies. I didn’t even have a key for this one.
We learned later that the mechanical baby needed to be reprogrammed but, at midnight, our son didn’t care.
So I got up and offered empty advice and he finally took the baby back to his room where it cried all night despite his best efforts.
He carried the wailing baby into school the next morning where the teacher reprogrammed it.
But he’d lost so much sleep that he slept through the normal cries the next night.
Our son is a terrific father today to three sweet little boys but he also carries the distinction of being the only student in his class to fail Parenting 101.
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by Kathy Brasby | Oct 21, 2014 | Stories
The best thing about moving with children is the stories that sprout.
Our move forced our kids to pack up their bedroom stuff. Not the furniture and not the clothes. But the toys and mementoes were their business.
Our 6-year-old son embraced the challenge. He dragged empty cardboard boxes into his room and managed to tape them closed himself. He wrote his name on the outside and added them to the mountain of boxes in the living room.
His system worked perfectly and his boxes were transferred to his bedroom in our new home.
I had noticed, a couple of weeks before, that he had gathered all the decorations from his sister’s birthday celebration and squirreled them away in his closet.
On moving day, when I wandered into his room with a knife to slice through the tape on his boxes, I discovered his happy little secret.
He’d filled his boxes with a cloud of inflated birthday balloons.
The story has lasted a lot longer than the balloons.
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by Kathy Brasby | Oct 6, 2014 | Stories
Sometimes you face your fears with determination and courage. Sometimes you face an angry mama cow the same way. Especially when the stick keeps breaking.
My mother was always game for helping with the livestock on the family farm. We had a small group of black Angus cows that needed to be moved to a new corral. Mom dried her hands on her dishtowel and jumped to the task.
Black Angus cows can be aggressive in their nurturing skills. This means that, when they had a new calf, they could be a bear to move into a new pen.
They’d rather knock you flat and then move into the new corral.
But Mom knew cattle and she scaled the fence with a stick in hand.
“You don’t back down,” she told us kids many times. “You face them and show them you’re in charge.”
So, in this case, she flailed her arms a few times, which generally got cattle moving in the right direction.
This particular cow chose the attack mode. She lowered her head and took a few menacing steps toward Mom.
Mom responded by bashing the stick on the cow’s head.
The cow stopped. The stick broke off at the end.
Then the cow lunged again. Mom slammed the stick onto her head and the cow stopped. The stick broke off at the end.
This continued with the cow charging, Mom banging with her stick, and the stock breaking until Mom was out of stick.
Fortunately, the cow had tired of stick bashing because she turned and trotted into the new pen.
“What did you do then?” I asked Mom later.
She laughed. “I’ve never gotten over that fence so fast.”
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by Kathy Brasby | Sep 30, 2014 | Stories
The Internet has proven to be such a valuable resource for amazing topics. For example, our 18-year-old looked up from his computer the other day.
“According to research,” he said, “there is a right way to hang toilet paper.”
“Did somebody pay money for this research?” I asked.
“They studied the angle of the sheet and how efficiently you can unroll the paper.”
“Really. They studied this?” I guess there’s a little of the cynic hiding in me somewhere.
“Oh, yeah. I read a whole article on it. I could google it if you want to read it.”
“No, thanks.” He took time to discover this information?
“So they found out that the best way is to let the paper fall over the top of the roll.”
“Uh-huh.” Unlike some households, this has never been a point of dissension for us. I thought none of us cared. So I had to ask. “Is that the way you hang toilet paper?”
He’d already turned back to his computer but his head popped up.
“I never hang toilet paper,” he said. “I put it on the counter top.”
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by Kathy Brasby | Sep 23, 2014 | Stories
I knew I was dead.
I was eight years old and neatly tucked into bed, sheet under my chin after my pillow fluffed. Kiss on my cheek and the light dowsed.
I was listening to my heartbeat as I drifted off to sleep.
My heart slowed. Boom. Boom.
And then it stopped.
Children at age 8 have no experience of what to do when your heart stops. So my choices were: 1) allow that heart to stay stopped or 2) to panic.
I panicked.
I leaped out of bed, terrified that I was only a half step from the pearly gates.
What would an 8 year old do with a stopped heart and a panicked brain?
Well, this one raced through the kitchen, into the bathroom and took a drink of water.
A long drink.
Fortunately, my cure worked.
I checked my heart and it was pounding.
Hard and fast. Boom Boom Boom.
I had dodged the bullet. Escaped the final destination. Side-stepped the end.
I crawled back into bed with relief that I could continue for another day.
Remember this the next time your 8 year old finds monsters under the bed.
Their heart could have stopped, you know.
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by Kathy Brasby | Sep 16, 2014 | Stories
The day I met my namesake out in the pigpen was the day I decided I wasn’t using people names for our livestock anymore.
Our neighbor’s daughter liked to name their pigs after friends. Seeing a hog rooting in the mud and learning that her name was Kathy – well, that was the turning point.
No more Abraham or Elinore or Danielle.
But the animals needed names. If you can’t use the neighbors’ names and you can’t use the baby book names, what can you use for ideas?
A dictionary, of course.
Which explains why we’ve had livestock carrying such names as Tripod, Rugby and Torch. We’ve had Breeze, Warrior and Colossal.
Such names as Scimitar and Saber have been attached to some of our animals over the years. We’ve used Cola and Domino and Tinsel.
Not long ago, a friend send a rabbit our way. “She’s not named,” said our friend. “Although I think I should have called her Frying Pan, just to fit in with your barn.”
I don’t know why she laughed. That name would have worked for us.
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