The Darndest Things

I vaguely remember…vaguely because I know I must have been just a wee, small child at the time…the Art Linkletter Show. There was a part of the show that was called “Kids say the darndest things”. And they did and they do and…they always will. My granddaughter’s description of Holiday travel comes to mind. In town from Chicago for Christmas, when asked how the trip was going Amelia said, “You know…Good bye, good bye, goodbye…drive, drive, drive…Good bye, good bye, goodbye…drive, drive, drive. My two and a half year old grandson made an observation recently that was priceless. See, we keep all the toys that stay at our house in the Florida room and it’s usually quite a…how shall I say this…disaster…yeah, that’s how I should say this…a disaster to say the least. One day my wife got tired of the mess and cleaned it all up. Put stuff away and brought order to toyland chaos. My grandson walked into the room, looked around and in little boy amazement declared, “Gwandpa…nice and clean”! It only took him about three minutes to return the room to its previous state of disaster. I came back into the room and said “Brady…what happened to nice and clean?” He slowly looked around…shrugged his shoulders…and said with a sigh, ”I broke it”. It’s not only kids though. We’ve all contributed our share of those darndest things at one time or another. In my advertising career there was the account rep who made the point quite dramatically that if I was going to use humor…it better be funny. It was President Eisenhower that said most eloquently, “Things have never been more like they are today than ever before”. How true is that?! Then there was my Dad. Now I’m not sure if this is a true darndest thing statement according to Art’s darndest things rules, but it made a pretty darned good impression on me. A few of my brothers and sisters (I have four of each) and I were sitting around the Thanksgiving table after dinner…complaining about our kids. My Dad sat at the end of the table quietly listening. He let us go on for awhile before he finally stood up…and looking at all of us…as only a father can do…said with a twinkle in his voice and his eye…”So…how does it feel”?