Serious Business

Rather than #2 or "poo," when I was young my parents used the term "serious business." You can, too, next time someone tells you something you disagree with! The book is a collection of short stories I used to tell my kids as bedtime stories. This blog has a few of the stories. The book is actually two books, the one titled "Bedtime Stories Only" has just the bedtime stories. The one titled "Humorous Non-political Short Stories to Get You Through 2020" adds some stories with swearing and sexual situations that I did not use as bedtime stories.

Sample stories are below:

Fire Engine

Fire Engine—When my brother was about three years old, eight years before I was born, my parents bought him a toy riding fire engine for Christmas, the kind a kid can climb in and ride around. The fire engine came in a box with a picture of it on the side, but it was unassembled. My father took the parts into his shop to assemble it and left the box. My mom, not realizing the box was empty, wrapped it. My father assembled the fire truck, but forgot it in his shop.

Christmas morning, my brother opened an empty box with a picture of a fire engine on the side.

“Oh, boy!” he exclaimed with delight, climbed in it, and started making fire engine sounds.

The Big Word

When I was about four years old, there was a kid on our street a few houses down who was my age and he bragged one day that he was so smart he could spell any word. No way, I said. Oh, yeah? Said the kid, tell me the biggest word you can think of and I’ll spell it. I thought and thought. “Mountain” was the biggest word I could think of. “M-O-U-N-T-A-I-N” he said. I ran off to my house.

M-O-U-N-T-A-I-N, M-O-U-N-T-A-I-N, I kept repeating in my head as I ran.

When I got home, out of breath, I ran from room to room to find my mom. Finally I found her. “Mom, mom, is this how you spell mountain, M-O-U-N-T-A-I-N?” I asked her.

“Yes.” She said.

“Oh” I said, disappointed that the kid was correct.