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January 14, 2005

I Know Kids Grow Up Fast, But...

I was in my local Kroger grocery store the other day, the one where very few people speak English. While I was pondering the various bread choices (I always get the cheapest brand, but I still like to browse), a little boy, perhaps three years old, raced around the end of the aisle and came right up to me.

"Hey, you, girl!," he exclaimed.

I turned around, surprised to hear my native tongue in the multicultural grocery store, and faced a little boy dressed in an odd match of green shorts and a striped purple shirt.

"Hey, girl," he said again, "Guess what? I got dodent!"

You need to realize that, based on my past teaching experience with handicapped preschoolers and my general passion for the little ones, I pride myself on the ability to determine a child's intentions when he has garbled speech. Since he now had my attention, I knew I could figure out what he said.

"You have what?" I asked.

"I got dodent," he insisted again.

I was stumped about the meaning of dodent. A frenzy of possible meanings of "dodent" flew through my head--did he have diarrhea? A new toy? Spiderman underwear? I concluded from his tone of voice that he was rather pleased with his possession of dodent. So I decided to play along, suspecting he probably meant the word "doughnut."

"Oh, you do??" I responded, "Do you like to eat those?"

I fully expected him to nod and disappear back to the doughnut and snacks aisle, the aisle directly next to the bread. But instead he turned up his nose and declared,"You no eat dodent. Duh!"

"You don't? Then what do you do with it?"

At this moment, he reached into his pocket and proudly unveiled his treasure: a trial size package of deodorant. "No 'tinky pits!," he squealed.

"No stinky pits, huh? Well, that's always important, I guess," I said.

With that, my new little friend turned and trotted over to his grandmother, who had steered her cart into the bread aisle and was selecting her loaf. As I passed him with my new bread in hand, I said, "Hey, you have fun with that deodorant, OK?"

He grinned, nodded, stuck out his chest in a gesture of pride, and said, "'Tinky pits bad. Me no 'tink now!"

Kids. I realize they grow up fast, but this is ridiculous!

Posted by Anna at January 14, 2005 04:52 PM

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Posted by: Christopher at January 14, 2005 11:29 PM