His Dogness

The new Veggie Tales pirate movie inspired Doobins to create his own pirate costume, which included not only an eye patch but also a peg leg. He created the peg-leg effect by sticking his foot in a bucket.

With his foot in a bucket, he couldn’t pick up his foot because, if he did, it would ccme out of the bucket. So he walked by dragging his peg leg across the floor. Someone with pristine wood floors would have been horrified. The floors at Garnet’s house took the peg leg in stride.

The bottom of the bucket was too small for Doobins to spread out his foot completely so he had to scrunch it up to get it in. As a result, he had a slight limp for a time after took off his costume.

That’s the end of that story.

This morning, I drove Sparkle Girl and Doobins out to their grandparents’ house in Mocksville. The scenic route I took put us on some roads they didn’t recognize.

Asking the names of the roads we were taking got them onto the subject of what they would name roads if it were up to them.

Cheese Road. They both liked that.

Ice Cream Road they liked even better.

“I wish I lived on Ice Cream Road,” said Sparkle Girl.

I didn’t ask whether that was because she thought that people who lived on Ice Cream Road would automatically have more ice cream in their lives or whether it was enough that she would be reminded of ice cream whenever her address came up.

For me, one of the pleasures of spending time with Sparkle Girl and Doobins is that they freshen up language in such entertaining ways.

The latest craze around their household is watching “The Andy Griffith Show.” We bought the DVD boxed set of the first season and have been working our way through the discs. In one episode, Barney gets himself a batch of prisoners, and he makes the most of his bonanza.

“Suck in that gut!” Barney orders one of them.

The phrase was new to Doobins, and he misheard it.

“Suck in that duck!” he ordered the prisoner.

After Sparkle Girl corrected him, Doobins made the adjustment, and he has thrown in his lot with the common usage.

“Suck in that gut!” he says when the mood strikes him.

I, for one, am sticking with “Suck in that duck.”

The other day, when Doobins heard that a friend of his was on the way over, he expressed his enthusiasm by proclaiming, “Gad and Zooks!”

I’m stealing that one, too.