So the eight-year-old gets up one morning before school and stumbles downstairs to curl up in daddy's lap while he is reading the paper. (Yes, we still subscribe to a newspaper. Hopelessly retro.) I am drinking my coffee and also reading the paper, and am just barely conscious myself. The Hubster and the older daughter wake up bright-eyed and chipper and talkative, like squirrels, while the eight-year-old and I walk into walls for the first 45 minutes. Anyway, the eight year old, all sleepy and curled up in a little purple chenille ball, says: "Tell me a story, Daddy."
So he does. "Once upon a time, there was a turtle," he begins, and I start to listen out of one ear, because somehow when the kids say to me, "Tell me a story," my mind goes blank in precisely the same way it goes blank when somebody says, "Where do you want to eat?" or "What do you want for your birthday?" So I am always interested in what my Better Half--who is a scientist, NOT a writer--can dredge up, because he is pretty inventive.
This one's about a turtle who lives in a little bitty mud puddle and is veeery, veeery slow and likes things that way--until one morning, "when he woke up, and discovered he had grown an outboard motor."
"NO!" commands the eight-year-old, who slaps him with the end of her bathrobe belt. "I don't even know what an outboard motor IS, so NO OUTBOARD MOTORS"--and dad dutifully complies. Which is a shame, because I was really wanting to know what happens to a turtle in a small puddle who grows an outboard motor.
