Happy Birthday, Shammy!!!!

So, I was thinking that I should probably put up a post, lest all of my favorite blog pals find somewhere else to hang out... like a blog with actual new content on occasion... I am getting lots of work in, revised revisions - the first agent who gets this thing will see their reflection in the pages it’s so friggin’ sparkly polished... okay, I hope so anyway... so there’s no progress report on that front, but I should be posting one shouting from the rooftops that I’m done in the very near future. Since there’s not much to post about revisions, and I have no writerly type posting at the moment, I thought I’d take a page out of Ello’s book and tell you a kid story, because it amused me, so I figured, what the hell...

My youngest begged me for his very own pet last year. He was four, going on five at the time and, as we already have a lovely yellow lab, named Dulcie, I said “No” and promptly ignored his four year old and very cute wheedling. This went back and forth for a number of weeks, as I recall, each time I reminded him that he already had a dog, but he really wanted something that was his... I get it, but he was four and I knew ‘his’ meant I’d have some rodent infested cage to clean up, or worse... the answer stayed a firm no.

One day soon after, he picked up a rock at the park. It was a smooth rock; about the size of my palm, gray in color, nothing particular about the way it looked... it was a rock. He carried it home with him, which is par for the course with four year old boys. But then he kept carrying it around for days afterward. He put it on his bedside table at night, carried it down to breakfast, brought it in his backpack to school, and hid it in his pocket when I told him to leave the dirty rock at home.

We were sitting at the kitchen table for breakfast one morning, I was in a rush to get my two oldest to finish and get out the door for school and the little guy says,

“Wait, I have to get Shammy!!!!”

We were in the car before I thought to ask, “What’s a Shammy?”

Little guy held up the rock and said, “Shammy!”

“You named it Shammy?”

“His real name is Sham Rock, but I call him Shammy for short... Shammy,” said little guy, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

The only thing I could figure was that it was close to St. Patrick’s Day and he got the idea from all of the decorations around... still, I thought it was rather cute, but I also knew he was really still pushing for the pet.

Fast forward to now. He still has Shammy. He has lost toys far bigger and way more expensive in the void where all new toys go, wherever the heck that is. He has abandoned games, gotten bored with TV shows, and grown a year older in every way, but he still has Shammy. Shammy now has a face, with a silly nose and googley eyes, he has green hair, because little guy thinks that would be fitting for someone named Sham Rock. And little guy never did get his pet... after a while he stopped asking.

He doesn’t carry Shammy around everywhere anymore, sometimes he thinks of it and grabs Shammy to watch a movie or sit with him at the table, but mostly Shammy sits guard on little guy’s dresser and keeps his Clifford company.

Today little guy informed me that Shammy’s birthday is coming... I was kind of surprised, mostly because he’s right, it’s about a year since he found that rock – I still don’t know if he’s just that good with birthdays or the whole St. Patrick’s Day hoopla reminded him.

“Wow, we’ll have to wish him a happy birthday, then, which day is it?” I asked in my sweetest, mom’s patronizing kind of voice... you know the one you hated when you were a kid... yeah, I know, I want to kick myself sometimes, too...

“It’s tomorrow,” Little guy said, matter of factly, “We’ll have to bake him a cake. Shammy likes chocolate with chocolate frosting...” he smiled, that very large, I’m too cute not to do my bidding smile and added, “with sprinkles... Shammy loves sprinkles.”

Okay, it’s official, my five year old is smarter than I am. Guess who’s baking a cake this weekend....