Ramshackle
Some background: I’ve had various back and hip injuries over
the past two years, which sometimes render me unable to do anything at all for
a few days until the meds kick in, often interfere with basic functioning, and
always have me extremely cautious about whatever I do, because I can’t afford
to be out of commission. I have a two-year-old who needs her daddy to be able
to pick her up. I’ve been doing PT, chiropractic, anti-inflammatories, massage,
all the stuff you’re supposed to do. There’s progress, then there’s setbacks,
it’s a pain in the ass (literally), it never seems to end, and the less said
about the whole mess the better.
But the point is, my two-year-old is old enough (and smart
enough) to notice when Daddy is using a cane or crutches and to be inquisitive
about why. So she understands that
sometimes Daddy’s hip hurts and he needs an ice pack and medicine to feel
better, and that sometimes Daddy can’t pick her up but Daddy still wants to
spend time with her and hug her, and that Daddy has to be careful with his hurt
hip.
She has, for the past couple weeks, been demanding the same
bedtime story every night (The Caboose that Got Loose by Bill Peet), and
it includes among many other things a line about the “ramshackle barn” the
caboose would pass every day. After the
first 800 readings or so, I figured the kid had most of the story memorized and
I’d make her help tell the story, so I often stop and have her supply the next
word (pointing to the picture if there is one)… as in: “Ramshackle…” “BARN!”
Today, we went to visit a farm (which she enjoyed, but
that’s another story), and on the way there and back she started pointing out
barns and saying “That’s a ramshackle barn!” Most of the barns were, indeed,
pretty ramshackle, but some were new. Just to see if she’d get the difference,
I asked her if she knew what “ramshackle” means. (Naturally, she said she did,
and she didn’t). I told her that “ramshackle” means the barn is old and rusty
and broken down, so some of the barns were ramshackle and some were new.
Later on that day, she saw a house that looked sort of
barn-shaped and said “That’s a ramshackle barn! Sometimes, people have new
barns, and then they become old ramshackle barns, and then the people fix them
so they will be un… um… unshackled!”
Again: My TWO-year-old is at that level of linguistic
sophistication. It’s a grammatical error, of course, but only because English
is the bastard offspring of a dozen different languages and therefore has no
actual consistent rules of grammar. This leap was perfectly sensible, and would
have totally been right in any language that made sense.
Later on, as we were brushing teeth and beginning the
evening routine, she asked me, “Daddy, are YOU ramshackle? Are you old and
broken?”
I shit you not.
As I laughed my ass off, I told her “Sometimes, hon…
sometimes. But Daddy’s doing exercises to help fix that.”
By the way, I was only guessing at the definition of
“ramshackle” myself, since I’d only ever seen it in her book and maybe once
before in a similar context. I looked it up in the dictionary just now, and
apparently it means “Loose and rickety; likely to fall to pieces; shaky (A ramshackle old building)” So in fact,
the kid’s absolutely right – Daddy is indeed ramshackle.
© John M. Munzer
