Kids say the darndest things! Being a teacher I could tell stories in this category for hours, but so can most moms.  Having three kids, the entertainment never stops. For instance, Aunt Anna cooks the best chicken and dumplings hands down. Over the years at family reunions, Travis and I always scan the table for those first. Tucker who loves chicken, always refused to eat them as a child. One family reunion as we were sitting on our blankets eating, Tucker looked at us with sad, sad eyes, shaking his head back and forth.

“What’s wrong, Tucker?”

“How can ya’ll eat those?”

“Eat what?”

“Chicken and ducklings; how can you eat cute baby ducks!”

Tucker was always tenderhearted, even though he was physically tough.

Tucker took a lot of hard knocks! When learning to walk, he fell in a parking lot and hit his mouth on a curb.  He hopped up, with blood running down his chin and neck, and just kept toddling right along, never a tear.

When he was about three, he decided to swing lying on his stomach. At some point, he slid off head first and skinned his entire face!  Still no crying!

Later at around age eight, he began enjoying baseball.  We had a Hit Around. (It’s a ball that is fastened around a tree. For batting practice, you hit the ball, and it always comes back around for you to hit again.) One day I was eating a snack in the recliner. He walked up with a very strange look on his face. “What’s wrong?” I asked in a panicked mom voice. He calmly leaned over my plate and spit out blood and a hunk of his lip!

Compassion

On the exterior Tucker was tough as nails, but on the inside he was my compassionate sweetheart. Movies like The Incredible Journey brought a tear to his eye. One day we were watching a comedy. Office workers were having a birthday party, and they ran out of cake. The guy, that always got mistreated, didn’t get a piece. Tucker saw no humor in it!  He was disturbed for days, even though we kept saying, “It’s just a movie! It’s not real!”

He does not like anyone being mistreated.

In second grade, he told me about a boy that didn’t have clean shoes and wore old clothes. He was very upset because two classmates kept picking at him and calling him a hobo. I asked him if he knew the boy. He said “No, but Mama, one of these days, if they don’t leave him alone, I’m gonna knock their lights out.”

Well, he did! It was one of those times when as a parent I had to hide my proud smile as I signed the discipline note. Though I wasn’t proud that he got in a fight, I was pleased that he was standing up for someone less fortunate.

“Well that explains it.”

One day after Sunday school, the children’s teacher said to me, “Tucker told me about his uncle, that’s in the military and is currently overseas. I would like his address so our class can make him something.”

My reply was, “My brothers aren’t in the military.”

“Well maybe he means your sister’s husband.”

“I don’t have a sister.”

She looked very shocked. I was baffled.

“Well, he said his uncle was over there.”

Does she think he is lying in Sunday school?  “Oh wait!  I bet he meant my cousin, Karla’s husband. She has always been close to our family. Her kids call me Aunt Donna and mine call her Aunt Karla.”

When we got in the car I said, “Tucker, Ms. Kathy said that you told her about your uncle overseas. You don’t have an uncle overseas.”

“Yu-huh, Larry is over there.”

“Yes, but you do know he’s not really your uncle.”

“What?” He said with surprised eyes.

“Tucker, you do know that Karla isn’t my sister; Don’t you?”

Tucker gave the biggest sigh of relief and said, “Well, that explains it!”

“Explains what?”

Looking sad he said, “I always wondered why Granny never hung Karla’s picture on the wall with the rest of the family.”
I burst out laughing. Bless his little heart. I wonder how many times he looked up at the family photos on the wall and wondered, “Where’s Karla in all these pictures?”