Yesterday I had the pleasure of picking up my 10 year old great niece from school. I brought her back to work with me for about an hour and being out of touch on just what a 10 year old enjoys I took the safe route and bought her a Dr. Pepper and some chips and let her watch tv in the conference room. I had no idea that I was so rusty with kids. After all I have two girls of my own and have spent hours upon hours listening to the latest gossip and romances. The problem is that was over 30 years ago and having no grand children of my own I've lost touch......I'm no longer in the know! After work I took Sophie with me to Walmart. I asked her what she enjoyed looking at and she quickly responded something like "Floppies, Flirties, Fubby's, I never was quite sure. She darted down an aisle and brought back a package of stacking erasers in various colors in the shape of cartoon heads with confused looking faces. The package indicated that they were fruit scented. How thoughtful! OK I thought....only in the mind of a 10 year old would fruit scented goofy faced erasers be the bomb. So we threw them into the cart and resumed shopping. Once to my house I was really at a loss. My home is not exactly the cool hangout for prepubescent girls. I have long since cleared away the remnants of the giggly girls who once lived there. Their absence was replaced with a newly acquired obsessive compulsive need for order. I kept thinking this kid must be bored out of her mind. Even floppies, flirties, or whatever their names won't save her now. She's stuck with her 59 year old great aunt who doesn't even have cable tv to rescue her. Desperate to entertain I began forging through a bedroom closet until I found some long forgotten peanuts character dolls. I wasn't even sure if kids even knew who Lucy, Linus and Charlie Brown were anymore. Isn't this too lame for a ten year old today? I brought it to Sophie and together we set up the dolls and their school house scene. Suddenly Sophie asked if I had any brownie mix. Of course being the middled aged woman that I am and having been on a diet for the past 35 years I do not have anything in my home richer than key lime pie flavored low fat yogurt. Feeling so sorry for this poor little girl stuck with her out of touch, less than cool, great aunt I would have signed over the title to my car if she had asked for the keys. But instead we just posed the dolls while I told her every story and memory I had of her mother when she was a little girl. How she talked me into going to a haunted house on her birthday with all her friends and I screamed until I wet my pants and how she would eat cold English peas straight from the can. Before long my niece arrived to pick up her daughter and you cannot imagine my delight when I heard Sophie ask her mom if Aunt Dani could pick her up again from school tomorrow. Now I've got some shopping to do....brownie mix, ice cream and oh yes, fruit scented erasers. They are all the rage you know.
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