Yesterday I was ordered to give a command

performance at the party of a six-year old.

Miss Lillian, my grand neice was having a birthday party that included a couple hours of pony rides.

She wanted me to come as a cowboy, which was a snap for me. I simply showed up dressed like Slim Pickens in the western outfit I mentioned earlier.

Fifteen small children and the corrosponding number of mothes showed up for this festive event.

One of the things about young mothers is that they do not really understand children at all, and neither do automakers. They used to.

Back in the day they made seats out of vinal which is easy to messes related to childhood off of. You simply changed into a bathing suit, went to the firehouse, parked, opened all four doors and borrowed a fire hose and hosed the car out. A whole slew of slobber, blood, mud, spilled ice cream and the odd French fry would be washed out in just a couple of minutes.

Then you would drive home and park the car in the sun with the doors open for a while until it dried out. Pretty straightforward and simple, when you think about it a while.

Anyway, the mothers didn't really think about what to look out for.

There was a real scummy, nasty little pond near the pony riding arena and the kids made a beeline for it, which is to be expected. The first place you look for when a kid turns up missing is the nearest body of water because the moon draws water and the water draws kids.

Of course, it became my duty to watch the kids at the pond, and I took my responsibiity seriously, but I guess the mothers didn't look at who I was being responsible to.

I was responsible to the kids and made damned good and sure they had a good time because if one of the mothers had taken charge, there would have been hell to pay and the kids would have had a rotten time.

Of course, they got wet and some of them got pretty scummy, especially the kids that sat down in the mud. They got dirty and some of them found a jar or a can and took samples of the scummy water to take home. One kid caught a frog, of course and the frog got away.

It was badlam and chaos and as you can imagine some of the mothers were not too pleased to see their darling kids after about a half hour of genuine kid fun. I heard more than one mother gripe about how the car seat was going to have to be cleaned.

A couple of the mothers looked at me with daggers in their eyes and I returned the look with the amused smile of a wizened old man that knows children better than they do.

When I was their age, I was the first born grandchild and my grandparents expected me to be a nice little gentleman. They took me to Filene's and bought me Little Lord Fauntlroy suits and things like that.

Wrong move. I was a young fishing community wildman.

After a couple of those got torn up(something my father, a very wise man, predicted) the Lord Fauntlroy clothes were put aside for church and, on the advice of Dear Old Dad, I was them more or less permanently outfited in blue denim and flannel shirts.

Of course, since the pussification of the American male started, there are now damned few men around with the common sense my father had in raising children, especially boys. The men these days are about as bad a the women when it comes to letting kids have fun.

The mothers I dealt with were still in the Lord Fauntlroy stage,as for most of them this was their first kid and they seemed not to have figured it out yet.

Putting an old man in charge of a group of six-year olds is something a young mother will cringe at, but not all of the mothers were on their first child.

One or two of the mothers were in their late thirties and had more than one kid. These women seemed to take it in stride. Although they didn't have vinal seats in their car, they were ready with a couple of towels or a blanket of some sort.

These mothers seemed to appreciate the simple fact that I was there to make sure nobody got hurt.

It'll take a while, but over time most of these young mothers will probably learn.

Then again, the way men seem to have been pussified, maybe the women won't learn.

Time will tell.

Anyway, I had fun watching six-year olds be six=year olds.

More important, I LET six-year olds be six-year olds.


my other blog is:http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/