OK - He’s High Maintenance

There’s a lady I know who has beautiful sunshine eyes. Being terribly, terribly young (that is to say in the early part of child-bearing age), she has a lot of twisty ways of saying things. I learned from her that if some guy was being accused of “hitting on her”, it did not mean that he was engaged in some sort of pugilistic endeavor.

And even though she is quite thoroughly married to a rather nice guy, she still has the same name she had when she was thirteen. I find this appalling, but since she is otherwise so sweet and nice, I am able to grit my teeth and bear with this blatant massacre of tradition. The fact that her tweeny kid will not be able to list his parents as Mr. and Mrs. So-and-so is not an absolute guarantee that he will grow up confused to where he will be a mass murderer or worse... I think.

I have a haunting suspicion that I possibly may tend, at some very few times, to be less than violently progressive. Nevertheless, since this sunshine-eyed lady volubly agrees with the heresy promulgated by The Fabled PC that there is no doubt that “Ole Waltie has the finest mind that the 13^th century has produced”, the two of them tend to get along rather well. At my expense.

Fortunately, I love ladies, and can magnanimously put up with all their shortcomings. I can even learn from them.

If the lesson is extremely short and well-presented.

Take the phrase, “high maintenance”. This was casually thrown into a conversation by The Obviously Modern Bastion Of Youth (T.O.M.B.O.Y.) mentioned above.

Since Your Humble Obedient &tc. had not really been able to follow the conversation very well anyway, I felt free to butt in and ask what did she mean that the person she was referring to was “high maintenance”?

Those lovely sunshine eyes looked at me with a mixture of pity and forbearing tolerance.

“Well, Waltie, you are only “medium maintenance”.

Now understand, Gentle Reader. I could tell that she was trying to be nice, and in the terms of the Sixties, she was obviously cutting me some slack. I think I was pleased to learn that I was only “medium maintenance” as an acquaintance, but I still did not know what the heck it meant.

Of course, explanations were foggy at best.

Then I had a chance to learn first hand the accuracy of some of TOMBOY’s jargon.

Puck and Carol wanted to go to Daytona to watch a bunch of automobiles drive around and around in a circle. I do not know why. Nevertheless, The Fabled PC jumped at the chance to play Grandma for a whole 24-hour period to Wolfie.

For those of you who have tuned in late, Wolfie is my three month old grandson, Wolfgang Hunter Snedeker. He is adorable and beautiful, with a very faint gossamer whisper of red hair on his otherwise bald little head.

Sounded like fun. I could play Grampa.

Forty tons of equipment was moved into our living room. It looked vaguely like one of those workout emporiums that I will never go to. A swingy-thing (thank God!!), a stroller, a crib-cum-playpen. A humongous box of stuff which held something called Enfamil (?), nineteen bottles labeled “Nuk”, tweeny weeny diapers, blankets, and enough tiny clothing to outfit all of the Munchkins.

There was more. Things like a trapeze looking thing that had Cookie Monster and Big Bird dangling in grabbable range when said Wolfie was ensconced in his bouncy chair thing… The list is impressive and I could go on, but I think you get the idea.

That was the early morning. In no time, Puck and Carol were on their way.

And Wolfie needed a bottle. RIGHT NOW!

We overheated the first bottle by nuking it ten extra seconds. Start over. Meanwhile, Wolfie was pealing – that’s the right word, I did not misspell it – the paint of the living room walls.

Fuzzy Britches was hiding in the library (where he stayed for the next 24 hours).

We got the “Nuk” into Wolfie. That somehow made it worse. Until he burped. After we cleaned that up, we had to stuff some more “Nuk” in him.

Diapers. I had forgotten about diapers. (*sigh*)

Then came the cereal-looking stuff that was supposed to go into Wolfie. Except he didn’t want any. Wise lad, it looked awful. He wanted… something.

So The Fabled PC put him in the swingy-thing. Wolfie dropped right off to sleep, looking like a perfect, tiny angel.

For twenty minutes.

At first, The Fabled PC and Your Humble Obedient &tc. were anxiously grabbing Wolfie away from each other in order to hold his sweet-smelling little precious self. His grins were captivating.

At about ten o’clock that evening, I was somehow unable to get The Fabled PC’s attention to point out to her that it was time for her to take him for a while. This, even though she was only five feet away, “reading” a magazine held upside down.

We had a deal for the nighttime hours. The Fabled PC would get up during the night as necessary, but early morning was my responsibility. Lest you think this was some kind of a swell deal for me, Gentle Reader, be advised that my darling’s definition of early morning was any time after three A.M.

Since I am a notoriously light sleeper, I was aware that my lovely redhead had to get up two times on her shift. Finally, just after two o’clock, all was quiet.

Until exactly 4:14.

Small wails cut like electricity through my dream of sitting in a tree stand in the silence of the forest, watching that trophy buck approach. The buck nudged me and said, “your turn”.

So I stumbled about, warmed up the fortieth bottle of nuk, and stuffed it in Wolfie’s ever-hungry little craw. And changed his (*sigh*) diapers. He smiled a lovely toothless grin at me.

At seven, my dainty bride took over for an hour.

And so it went.

By three that afternoon, we were overjoyed to see Puck and Carol pull up out front. They ran in quickly to see their wee bairn, having missed him dreadfully. Huggies and kissy-poos all over the place. Wolfie was goo-ing and smiling at everyone.

Well, Puck and Carol went home with the little guy. PC and Your Humble Obedient &tc. looked at each other, smiling tiredly. It was 7:45 at night. We went to bed and slept until 9:00 in the morning. Truly, youth is wasted on the young.

The Fabled PC’s sleepy-beautiful face leaned over to me and whispered, “She’s right. The best description in the world is to say that Wolfie, however adorable, is high maintenance.”

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