Kids will surprise you.  They can be very industrious at a very early age.  It’s amazing how much knowledge they can retain so quickly.   We get used to being amazed and proud of our children.  It’s what parents do best.  We see something in our own kids that nobody else sees.  We are adept at seeing potential when perhaps none is evident.  It’s shakes us up a little when our children do not live up to our high expectations.
Last year my seven year old son was in the house alone.  I was in the shop working on my boat.  I realized it was getting time to eat something but I was just about finished with what I was working on.  I got into the house about an hour later than we usually eat supper.  I  walk through the door to see my son setting alone at the Kitchen table.  He had gotten out everything which is needed to make pancakes.  He had arranged them on the table in front of him.  He had a mixing bowl and spoon, measuring cups, pancake mix, eggs, milk, and syrup all sitting before him.  He had placed a skillet on the stove with a spatula resting beside it.  He hadn’t turned anything on.  He was patiently waiting for me.  I was very proud of him.  He hadn’t broken any rules.  He had shown planning and organization skills.  He knew what he wanted and had endeavored to get it.  He got a good result from it, pancakes. This week however, we went to the opposite end of the spectrum.
It’s spring time.  Around here that means crappie fishing, stock car racing, and getting the garden ready.  Tilling the garden was the task at hand last week.  I tilled the garden with my dad when I was young.  I was very proud to see my son out there with  me as we work.  I let him guide the tiller for a bit with me standing at the ready in case it got away from him.  Things were good.  It’s always nice to do things with your kids that your parents did with you.  I feel a certain amount of connectedness to my ancestors when this happens.  He got tired of this before long and I let him go into the house to watch cartoons.  I had been tilling for a good  long while when I realized the time.  It was a good two hours past lunch.  I shut off the tiller and walked to the house.  My nephew had shown up and was walking quickly to me with my son.  What he said next took my by surprise.  He told me that when he drove up he said hi to my son who was just walking out of the house.  He said he noticed he was chewing on something and asked him what it was.  My son replied “raw bacon.”  I don’t know about anyone else but I’ve always heard raw pork is dangerous.  They way I understood things the equivalent of eating raw pork was eating human waist straight out of a soiled hospital bed pan with a fork made out of used hypodermic needles from the drug clinic.  My grandmother was so paranoid about raw pork she would cook bacon until it was so done it was like trying to eat glass.  It would shatter in your teeth.  Raw bacon is bad right?  I freaked out a bit and then I googled “what happens when you eat raw bacon.”  It turns out bacon is cured so the chances of getting some nasty bacteria is slim.  I am relieved.  I ask my son the age old parental question, Why?  He tells me the package said not to eat uncooked bacon.  He was eating raw bacon.  He saw a distinction between the two.  I explained to him that raw and uncooked mean the same thing.  He’s got the idea now.  Maybe the uncooked turkey in the deep freeze is safe until thanksgiving.
Raw bacon is bad but my niece had the all time worst eating related mishap.  She was maybe two or three years old at the time.  We were sitting on the porch when one of  my dad’s coon dogs hopped up.  I wasn’t paying her much attention.  I was young and my mind was on other things.  I was supposed to be watching her so she wouldn’t fall off the porch, but she was safe in the middle petting the dog.  My mom walked outside and asked me what I had given her to eat.  I told her I had given her nothing.  My mom immediately dug the remnants of a big gray dog tick out of my nieces little mouth.  Mom made her spit what was left of the red tick juice out.  I don’t know if I’ve ever been so queasy.  I’ve been thinking about which one I’d rather eat; a dog tick or raw bacon.  I gotta go with the raw bacon.  I just can’t make a case for the dog tick.