We have not spent as much time as usual with the three youngest granddaughters lately what with vacations, summer camps and such, but we had a full day together last weekend.
It was a back-to-school shopping trip to Alexandria with just the girls, Regina and me. There was a lot of catching up to do in person instead of on FaceTime.
Charlee Ann, who is headed to second grade, talked incessantly about things like painting, swimming, Disney Channel shows, Shark Week and other interests.
That frustrated Allie, 10, and Ava, 11, so they all talked at the same time for the first part of the trip until we created a traffic pattern for the chitchat.
When Charlee got the floor, she did some speed-talking without taking a breath. I tried to secretly show Regina the fingers flapping signal to indicate someone is talking excessively.
Charlee stopped in mid-sentence, said, “I heard that,” and kept talking.
The avalanche of discussion started with the simple questions of what their latest career choices were and which animal they would have left off of Noah’s Ark.
Allie still wants to be an orthodontist, Ava likes the idea of doing ultrasound exams in hospitals, and Charlee wants to be a sculptor. Maybe she will have a trust fund.
They all agreed that their last choice of occupations would be coal mining. That would be way down on my list too.
After much consideration, there was a consensus that none of the animals should have missed the ark. They debated about whether God put a chicken or egg on the ark, but that issue was not resolved.
Charlee was especially sensitive to the idea of Noah leaving any creature behind. She loves stuffed animals, and her mother weeds them out periodically.
She said the raccoon she won in a shooting contest at Silver Dollar City is still around, but Murphy the monkey “is probably on his way out the door. His tail is shedding, and he’s smelling bad.”
Everybody but Allie found shoes at the first store we went in. After trying three other places, she said there were some at the second store she liked. When Allie and I went back, Charlee bet the others five dollars we would come out with no shoes.
But we got some Nikes and then shopped for school supplies, socks, underwear and other essentials.
Charlee got a seven-pack of panties with a different day of the week printed on each pair. “All I have to do is look at my underwear to see what day it is,” she said. But it could get complicated if I don’t know what day it is when I put them on.”
I reminded them that we had all these bags of things for them but nothing for their older sister Karmelya, who had an accident earlier in the summer and didn’t make the trip with us. “We got her some socks when she was in the hospital,” Charlee said.
They ate just before we left home, but we made a couple of stops for food. One lasted a good while, because Charlee was trying to perfect using chopsticks on rice and noodles.
I had not eaten earlier but got just two pieces of my eight-nugget meal. Allie ate the rest along with her own lunch. We went to another store afterwards to get her a size larger pair of blue jean shorts.
Croc stickers are new to me, but we got some and the girls spent much of the ride home trying to get those decorative rubber inserts into the holes of their Crocs shoes.
Charlee said Allie got all of her stickers in “but then her fingers were too red and aggravated to help me with mine.”
Allie said they wanted to make the back-to-school shopping trip a tradition. I will start saving up my money.
The shopping day lightened my wallet but lifted my spirits.
REPRINTED FROM THE NATCHITOCHES TIMES