I’ve been seeing this magazine cover throughout the day. It’s all over television and everyone is weighing the pros and cons of breast-feeding a child for several years, considerably longer than our society has come to expect. I have decided to comment on it.
My comment will be neither pro nor con because it’s her breast (s) and her four-year-old son, and it is not in my nature to approve or disapprove the actions of others. I have enough faults of my own to worry about.
Many years ago I read a scholarly tome written by a professor from one of our ivy-league colleges. He spent a lot of time in one of our states, compiling jokes provided by citizens in rural areas of that state. He presented each joke, then went into a dissertation of its meaning. A few were somewhat obtuse but most were short, to the point and hilarious. I’ll keep the state anonymous and let the reader decide which state was selected.
I remember many of the jokes and would delight in sharing them with my readers, but I’ll be content with the one that is germane to this posting. Of course, there is a story about a young boy, an old man, a fence and a rabbit that I would like to post, but I will desist unless a clamor arises for me to post it.
The TIME cover dusted off the cobwebs from the following memory:
A traveler was driving through a rural area on winding unpaved roads with few direction signs and finally became lost. He came to a house and saw a man standing in the front yard, so he stopped and asked for directions. While he was talking, a woman ran out of the house and down the road with a young man chasing her, and the two disappeared around a curve in the road.
The woman was barefoot and her clothing was disheveled, so the traveler asked the older man why the woman was running away from the young man, and if the woman was in danger.
The older man said, “Aw, that’s just Junior chasing Ma—she’s trying to wean ‘im.”
I submit to you, dear reader, that the attractive blond mother on the TIME cover with the four-year-old boy “getting his ninny” direct from the source may have to outrun him when the time comes. She could outpace him now, but she needs to maintain that svelte figure as the years go by or problems might arise—so to speak.
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
The King of Texas 
Larry
May 12, 2012 at 1:52 pm
Young boy, old man, a fence and a rabbit… clamor, clamor, clamor!
thekingoftexas
May 15, 2012 at 9:20 pm
Hey, thanks for the visit and thanks for all that clamor. That’s far more than I anticipated, so I suppose I should tell the story. The other joke concerns the same traveler continuing on his trip and as he passed the next house he saw a young man busily abusing a rabbit in the front yard.
He thought of stopping but thought better of it so he continued down the road. A short time later he noticed an old gray-bearded man sitting on the top rail of a fence by the roadside and busily abusing himself. (I believe that’s called consternation or distribution or something like that).
The traveler stopped his car near the old man and asked, “What in the world is going on here?” The self-abuser said, “What’s what going on?” The traveler said, “I just saw a young man abusing a rabbit, and now I find you doing this. Why are you doing it?”
The old man said, “I’m doing this because I can’t run fast enough to catch a rabbit.”
DeAnn
May 17, 2012 at 9:04 am
Having reared five of my own, I’ve given some serious thought to this topic. The breast feeding thing, not the rabbit chasing … though come to think of it, I do seem to do a fair bit of that as well ; )
… our pediatrician is pretty third world influenced … he was an advocate for maybe three or even four years of “nursing”. The medical community can lay it on pretty thick … anyway, I spoke with my very level headed OB/Gyn … shopping for an opinion more supportive of my own. He said he finds it unnerving to see a toddler fumbling with Momma’s buttons … and that when the kid starts asking for a cigarette afterwards … one has gone a bit far.
~DeAnn
thekingoftexas
June 4, 2012 at 5:06 pm
Speaking of laughing out loud, I did laugh out loud when I read what your pediatrician said about a toddler fumbling with Momma’s buttons and his comment on the cigarette—once again, I wish I had thought of that one. He sounds like my kind of guy—give him my regards the next time you see him.
I spend some time on your blog after I received your comments. Five children and painting and tiling and
grouting and certifying pilots. How in hello do you manage that! Your days must have at least 48 hours in them. Incidentally, I love all the quotes you post. I spend a lot of time trying to come up with something original, even though armed with the knowledge that there is really nothing new under the sun, and the best I can do is to rearrange the thoughts of another and then lay claim to its originality, and frankly I frequently do. That phrase frankly I frequently has a nice round sound, doesn’t it?
I enjoyed your joke with the Eat my grits punchline. I can relate to that—I love jokes, and as Jimmy Durante used to say, “I’ve got a million of ’em!” In fact, many years ago while I was still gainfully employed and had little to do, I started jotting down the points of all jokes I’ve heard and fleshing them out later. My plan was to publish a book of used jokes and I extracted some five hundred funnies from that empty place you described. One of my daughters is a desktop publisher, just one of her many talents. I usually tell people that my family has a tremendous amount of talent but she has all of it. She has the book ready for printing, but we haven’t gotten around to publishing it.
Okay, enough of this drivel—for me writing is similar to eating peanuts or running down hill—once one starts it’s hard to stop. There was another act that was also difficult to stop once one started, but I’ve forgotten the third one.
Thanks again for the comment, and y’all come back, ye hear!
I’m also sending this comment to your e-mail, just in case my reply gets lost in the atmosphere, or if Word Press deletes it.
Be well and fly right,
Mike