No Shrinking Violet

At the ballet studio where Scarlett takes classes, spectators can’t be in the room where the dancers are to avoid distractions. But there is a big window where we all gather to keep an eye on the fancy footwork. While watching one day, I said something friendly to a pre-school-aged older sister waiting for her class. And she just stared at me like I was speaking Chinese. Her mom hastily explained that she has what is called “periodic selective mutism,” which apparently means that she sometimes can choose to talk and sometimes can’t. Interesting, I thought to myself, but I could literally hear my dad say, “Or your kid is just rude.” And I laughed a little to myself. Not that I don’t believe selective mutism exists or that this little girl isn’t afflicted with it, but it did get me thinking about the lengths we go to putting the actions of those we love in a positive light. And parents are the most stubborn spin doctors there are. Have you ever noticed how other people’s children need more discipline but yours needs a nap? Or that other kids are badly behaved but yours is overwhelmed by the situation? I guess it all depends on who’s doing the defining. In Cathleen Schurr’s The Shy Little Kitten, everyone assumes the reluctant feline is shy because she doesn't hang out with the crowd or talk a lot. Maybe she needs her space. Maybe she’s communicatively selective. Or maybe she’s just a brat.

http://www.amazon.com/Shy-Little-Kitten-Golden-Storybook/dp/0307160394

http://www.randomhouse.com/author/results.pperl?authorid=38357

E-I-E-I-O

In my first year of college at Cal State Los Angeles, some kitchen mishap made our dorm apartment reek. As we opened the windows to get rid of the stench, I sputtered something about the smell being worse than a skunk. One of my roommates, a born and bred Angeleno, gasped back that she wouldn’t know because she had never smelled a skunk. Even having been metropolitan-born myself, I could not believe such a thing. Never smelled a skunk? Ever? To what do you compare all bad smells (other than Long Beach)? And then it got more bizarre: she’d never seen a cow either. My mind still reels all these years later. This young woman had reached pre-med student adulthood but had never been to a petting zoo, for heaven’s sake? How is this possible? My kids have been very fortunate that they have always had a local working farm and pumpkin patch to visit where they experience the animals, from newborn to retired, up close and personal. The farm shut down as a public entity this year, but I have twenty years worth of petting, feeding, and hay riding pictures as proof that I at least tried to broaden their suburban horizons. Annie North Bedford’s The Jolly Barnyard shows an idyllic picture of farm animals brainstorming what contributions they can make to the farmer’s birthday celebration. Maybe there’s some rich Southern California doctor that would pay for them to take their show on the road to the inner city.

http://www.amazon.com/Jolly-Barnyard-Little-Golden-Book/dp/0375828427

http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/585620.Annie_North_Bedford