Dear folks,

My son, Chaz, was a "different drummer" kind of kid. He was forever asking strange questions. Like the time, at about age four, he asked me if I remembered telling him about the soft, warm, dark place in my tummy where he had grown big enough to be born. When I told him I did remember, he asked if I were using it just at present. I said, " No, but why do you want to know?" He answered,in a tone of perfect reasonbleness, "I just thought if you weren't using it, it would be a good place to keep my turtle."

About a year later, riding in the back seat of the car, he piped up with, "Do you remember you told me I could be anything I want when I grow up?" "Sure," I said, adding a caveat, "... as long as you go to college." Silence, while he considered his options. Finally, in consternation, "but you said 'anything,' and I want to be a *bat*!"

When he was toilet-training, I explained that the reason poop had to go in the toilet was so we could send it back to the earth to feed the flowers and vegetables. I thought it would appeal to his innate sense of logic that since we got food from the plants, we should repay them in "fertilizer."

A couple of years later, when I had forgotten all that, we went to the annual Philadelphia flower show. At the time the city was treating sewage to make a fertilizer called "Philorganic." They had a display of the process and free 25 lb. bags to give away to anyone interested. Chaz was fascinated and got the man to explain the whole process to him. Then he looked at all the bags and asked, "Where's *my* bag?" "I don't understand, said the man." So my earnest son explained about "feeding the flowers" and insisted that they had to have his bag *somewhere." Chaz told the man that they had to give each of us "our own bags." So we ended up lugging home 50 lbs. of fertiliser to an apartment with only a few plants on the balcony. I had to work pretty hard to persuade him to let me give the useless stuff to friends with a large garden.

When he was about three, he announced that he knew "where G-D lives." "Really?" I asked, "Where *does* G-D live, Zeiskeit?" "In the little door in the back of the closet," he declared. I think he had seen the electrician who came to fix the fuse box, blow out a couple of fuses -- but what a conclusion!

When he was only about two and a half, I walked into the living room to find him sitting cross-legged on the couch, thoughtfully rubbing his comfort blanket on his cheek. He looked up at me and frowned. Then he asked,"Do turtles bite?" I had the feeling he thought he knew the answer, so I said, "I don't know. Do *you* think turtles bite?" He took a long breath, gave it his most serious consideration, and gravely declared," *Not* if you don't *bother* them." He turned his head away and resumed rubbing his little blanket on his cheek. I could tell that I had been dismissed, so I left the room.

Shalom,

Shula