Skippy has been sick for a week. Fever, cough…you know the story. We have had to spend a couple of nights on the sectional in the family room. The cough was keeping Dillon awake, since they share a room. Dillon gets up at 5:00 a.m. for an early-morning scripture study class, and then runs track after school…he can’t stay up all night. It wasn’t bad spending some quality time with the Skipster.
DK asked me today if I knew where Skippy’s name came from. Actually, I did not. He said that he was always creeped out by that clown on the ice cream cone box…whose name was Scoopy. So he started calling our adorable seventh-born “Scoopy.” But the rest of us apparently never realized that was what he was saying, and it turned into Skippy...and then stuck.I know. It kind of makes you wonder about DK, doesn’t it? He has always had a fascination with the macabre. He used to read stories to the kids. There was one that talked about daddies. “Porcupine daddy is a prickly daddy.” As if that one wasn’t weird enough, he added his own into the mix: “Guppy daddy is a dangerous daddy!” Yes, guppies eat their own young. He also delighted in reading from a morbidly fascinating vintage book, called “Struwwelpeter,” (shock-headed Peter). It is a book of tales designed to terrify young children into obedience…for instance, in one, a disobedient child sucks his thumb and has it snipped off.
Maybe DK has it right…our children have been exceptionally obedient and respectful. And mostly non-thumb-sucking. In the middle of the night, Skippy woke me up and said, “Mama, are you cold? You can hold me and get under my blankie…” That’s my Skippy. And I don’t think we have even read to him yet from Struwwelpeter. I guess it doesn’t hurt to have an ace in the hole.
8 comments:
Now, I am going to call him Scoopy but have nightmares about it.
Join the club.
That is so cute. How funny that everyone didn't know what he meant by that.
I was about to let the whole 'Scoopy' thing go, I mean really. But then Cupcake needed a nickname for the blog... Skippy!
Kevin,
I would love to have a guest post by you....
just saying..
Lisa
I have never been to a circus ahad a terrifying experience with clowns, i also have not seen any clown-themed scary movies, but thanks to this blog and the accompanying 'scoopy' photo, i now have a healthy fear of creepy clowns that look like albino hobos that obsess the old batman movies, with jack Nicholson, and want to one day be in the movies. This leads to their pan-handling fundage going to designer make-up purchases to further their childhood dreams of being like that guy in the movies.
I still think of Skippy as more of a peanut butter honey eating fiend that should have been read those peter books before he found the flour or cinnamon or nail polish... he is a mastermind that i think beats me in all of my time (except for the plastic wrap and the corolla).
Oh man...I had almost forgotten about the nail polish...the flour, the cinnamon... the FOOD COLORING! Oh, and the pickled jalapeños and moldy oranges. That one was blogworthy...
my german grandma gave us that book too! that's how my sister stopped sucking her thumb...she started checking behind her curtains at night to make sure the scissors man wasn't there haha
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