A Hoot and a Holler

       Writing yesterday's post I was reminded of a few sayings I came across in the quotes book. I had gone through the family quotes book recently to look for the you always take a chance with screw-cap wines quote, and I did not find it! This was a serious omission that has since been taken care of! What I am referring to here is my own quotes book of personal family sayings that I started writing in 1993 in a lined hardcover notebook that apparently Sarah had been using and then discarded. Over the years more sayings got added, and now there are over a hundred of them. Many of the quotes have explanations, and of the ones that do not, there is only one that I have no idea now what it is all about. But as you might imagine, when writing a memory-a-day for 365 days, tapping into the family quote book has been an invaluable resource!

       Anyway, this post is about the bedtime quotes that I was reminded about yesterday. When we still lived on Heinrich Road in the two bedroom house, in the earlier years, I slept in the upper bunk of the bunk bed in the kids' bedroom; Clark slept in the lower bed of the bunk, and Eric slept in the bed on the other side of the room after he had graduated out of the crib. When we got put to bed at night, we were not tired, and often we chatted for a while. Mom and Dad did not like the noise if we got too loud. Dad would come to the door, and he would say, usually through the closed door, “No singing, no dancing, no horsing around!”

       We were always tickled by that remark, especially since the boys often asked me to sing! Even back then I had a terrible voice, but I would sing every song I knew the words to – not loud enough to disturb the parents, I thought, but I sang.

       One night when we had been talking, Dad announced at the door, “No singing, no dancing, no horsing around!” And we got to speculating as to who was the dancing and who was the horsing around - because we already knew that I was the singing. And we decided that Denny was the singing, Clark was the dancing, and Eric was the horsing around. After that, I would fantasize about Dad opening the door some night and then the three of us would break into an act where we would each be playing our respective role in the singing, dancing, horsing around trio. What would have been Dad's response?

       When my own girls slept in the same room when they were quite young and I would have to get them to quiet down at night, the door would open and I'd say, “no more hooting and hollering!”

       One night I walked in, and before I could say anything, Sarah said, “Hoot!” followed by Amanda's “Holler!”

       A tear came to my eye. And they knew they had done good!

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