California kids
By PAT WICK
© Another Day in the Country
We have good kids in Ramona, clever kids, interesting kids, and bored kids. "Kids are just kids," you might think, but I have just spent the past week with a couple of California kids. There's a difference.
We took these two California kids to the Ramona Café Saturday for lunch — only we call it dinner here in Kansas, right? For them, it was lunch! We ordered our food and I ordered my favorite salad dressing — Dorothy Lynch. The California kids had never heard of it.
The minute that Dorothy came to the table, the 11-year-old California kid flipped the bottle around to read the ingredients on the label. "Do you know that tomato soup is the main ingredient of this dressing?" pause as he reads on, "No additional sugar. I'll try it."
My mouth was hanging open — which isn't polite by either Kansas or California standards when you are eating. "You read labels?"
The seven-year-old decided to have a soda with lunch and immediately explained to her mother that she'd only drink half of it, sharing the rest with her brother. "We aren't soda drinkers," explained Rhonda. "We don't keep it in the house." I was impressed. They aren't TV watchers either or incessant video game players.
We did Kansas stuff with these California kids. We knew this would be a hit because they'd been here before. We drove the tractor. When they were here last year, only the oldest had actually steered the tractor. Their time had been limited and his sister had bargained away her equal rights for tractor driving for a brand new deck of cards that she wanted — and which her brother had received — that were shaped like carrots. (It was Easter).
This time Corey's legs were long enough to actually do the clutch work and he mastered the shifting part and drove around the field solo — slowly. Tooltime Tim didn't want his sister to be left behind so he helped her drive, too. They were thrilled.
I guess Kansas kids also are thrilled about tractor driving but usually driving the tractor means helping work which comes with its own style of satisfaction. I know a 12-year-old who drove the swather proudly around the field this year, beaming over his accomplishment.
Cats are a great fascination for these particular California kids who are visiting us. Not that they don't have cats in California — it's just that we have kittens, and so many. They have named them all, figuring out that if a kitten wasn't named it was expendable.
As we went over to feed the chickens yesterday, Corey walked along with me. "How many of these cats are neutered?" he wanted to know. "How many more are you planning to have spayed?" he continued. "How will you make the decision? I think you should have Zsa-Zsa spayed for sure. She's a nice cat and I'd be glad to help with money." Once again my mouth was agape. "I get an allowance," he announced, "and I sort of have this thing about making sure there aren't too many cats on the planet." For sure this was a kid from California.
In some ways, they are just normal kids running around, playing soccer or basketball, teasing each other, fighting at times. However, in so many ways, they represent their culture in a far off state. They talk politics (remember they are only 11 and 7) and know the issues. They are concerned about pollution. They are learning Spanish. They know how to negotiate. They are respectful and say "please" and "thank you," putting us to shame. We've been teaching them to play "Hand and Foot" and they are already whizzes at playing 10-point pitch — our Ramona game.
These two California kids are my cousin Janice's grandchildren and we are amazed and grateful that they love to spend time with us for they are our connection with the next generation of Schubert kin. How fortunate we've been this past week to spend another day in the country with them.
