I ask Hattie Belle what I should write about today.
“Your loving daughters,” she says, without hesitation.
I swoon. I say, “You mean write about how much you guys love me?”
“NO,” she says. “About how much you love US.”
“Oh,” I say. “But you said ‘loving daughters.’ That means, uh, YOU, loving ME.”
“Oh. Okay,” she says, kind of bored.
She watches me type “kind of bored.”
(“‘Cause I am,” she reminds me. Bored. She is bored.)
“Do you want me to interview you?” I ask her.
“YES, I SAY,” she says.
I type.
“NO NO NO, ‘YES, I SAY. YES, SHE SAYS. SAY YES.’”
Now we are both confused.
Okay. “What would you like to be interviewed about?” I ask.
“Birds,” she says. “Now I don’t have the hiccups.” We tried to talk about birds yesterday, but she kept hiccuping in the middle of the word ‘hummingbird,’ and it made us laugh too hard to really get into hummingbirds.
“If you were a bird, would you still be a hummingbird?”
“No. I would be a cardinal.”
“Why?”
“Because I would get to eat cherries and I would get to come out on my birthday because my birthday’s November and cardinals like the winter.”
“They do?” I ask. “That cool. I never knew that about cardinals.”
(“Ask me another question,” she whispers. Which is why this part is in whispery parentheses.)
“Okay,” I say. I think.
She lights up. “I’m going to say, ‘Ummmmm, ummmmmm, FLOWERS.’”
“You want to talk about flowers?”
“Yes.” Nod.
“Why?”
“Is this a chance to say, ‘I don’t know’?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know.”
“How about we talk about loving daughters? So I can make it tie into the title.” I point at the post title. “See?”
“No. Yeah. Okay.”
“Would you say you and Sophie are pretty loving daughters?”
Sigh. “We love you.” She is still BORED.
“Is it boring, being a loving daughter?”
“Ummmmm, hmmmmmm.”
We are really going places. “How do you show your love for your parents?”
“By being GOOOOOD.” SO VERY BORED WITH THIS EXERCISE.
“What else?”
“Brush your teeth.”
“Wait, you brush my teeth when I’m asleep?”
“OOOOOPS.” She snorts.
“I know what you mean. Anything else? Would you rather love, or be loved?”
“I don’t know. You said I could say, ‘I don’t know.’”
“Okay, then, what does ‘love’ mean to you?”
“It means…..” Heavy sigh.
“HEAVY SIGH,” I type and say.
She laughs.
She laughs some more.
This love business is BOOOOOOORRING.
“Is there anything you’d like to talk about today?”
“Not really.”
“Gee, you’re fun, kid.”
“How many words did you write?”
I check the word count. “We are up to 412.”
“WOW! ‘THE END,’ she says firmly. “That’s the end of our show now.”
Okay, then. Happy Sunday, everybody.
Comments on this entry are closed.