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.
