When you have an only child…

Published 5:04 pm Tuesday, July 1, 2025

By

Johnnie W. Lewis

Our Baby Girl, Tash, was an only child until she was 14, which carried many risks and tribulations with the situation.  Like the time that she decided that she wanted an all-day sucker at 10:50 at night.  Baby Girl had been two-years-old for almost six months before she started displaying the “Terrible Twos” that are so dreaded by parents.  She had been an independent little cuss, but without all of the drama that precipitates most cases of child abuse.  Until we let her stay up one minute too late on a Saturday night.

We were out of milk and, after a long evening of visiting at my in-laws’ house, we headed home and stopped at the little “quickie” store just before closing time.  Of course the store was packed because so many others had pulled the same stupid stunt that we had pulled, of not planning well enough in advance.  All six families were in line, including ours, when Baby Girl spied the all-day suckers, strategically placed at a two-year-old’s eye level for impulse buying.  That’s the con-artist’s technique applied by the person who arranges the store layout, to “con” you into buying stuff you don’t need, at a time when you can least afford it, to satisfy a whim that you never wanted to surface.

Explaining anything to a two-year-old, of either sex, is a fine art.  At least, at 10:50 p.m. it is.  Especially in a store full of other customers watching and listening.  Rather than pop her bottom for lying in the middle of the floor and screaming like a banshee, I walked away from her with my hands in the air.  I know that bothered most of the male customers in the store, but when the females realized that I was not with her and obviously was not the one beating that racket out of her, they just grinned at me and said, “Good Luck!”  After about a minute of the screaming that had to be at 200 decibels in volume, the little body, which was writhing on the floor in seemingly untold agony, suddenly shut-up and looked around to realize that I was not there to witness her diatribe.  She immediately got up to come looking for me, as quiet as a mouse.  Twice more, in larger grocery stores in the middle of the day, she pulled that screaming-in-the-middle-of-the-floor routine.  I never touched her.  I simply walked around the corner of the aisle and peeked back to make sure no one got her.  When she quit screaming, she’d jump up and come looking for me, as quiet as a mouse.

Parents tend to treat girl children differently than they do boy children, especially if they are the oldest child or an only child.  And I, of course, was no exception to that rule.  I wanted her to be perfect, to be beautiful at all times, to excel at everything she attempted.  And for the most part she was.  On the day that Baby Girl turned three-years-old, she apparently decided that she had better straighten up, ‘cause Mommy was rapidly running out of patience.  She was almost an ANGEL for the rest of the time she lived with us.  Almost.

As the eldest child, with four younger brother, my life would have been a living hell if it were known that I was afraid of bugs.  So I learned to like and even fake an interest in bugs of all sorts.  Except those of the arachnid flavor.  I was bit on the neck once by a spider of some sort.  We couldn’t tell what kind it had been from the mush I made of its carcass.  And for years afterward, a little tiny “water blister” would appear at the spot where I was bitten.  I’d pop the blister and move on.  But, to this day critters with eight legs and I CAN NOT live in the same ten foot square area.  Either it’s dead or I’m gone.

When Baby Girl was four, we moved into a rented trailer in a trailer park.  A nicer one, but a trailer park nonetheless.  Where there were rocks around the patio.  Where there were bugs that lived under those rocks.  And Baby Girl began displaying a fear of bugs.  I wanted her to be unafraid of bugs, so I began by turning over the rocks in the yard and showing her the various creepy crawlies that lived under the rocks.  Especially those of the rolly-polly variety.  Tap the little thing on the back and he’d roll up like a ball.  They were so cute!  And she just LOVED them!  Wanted to save them all and give them a better place to live than under a rock.  I had to intervene and tell her that God MADE bugs to live outside the house. We had a blast with those little critters that afternoon.  Soon, Mommy tired of playing bug counselor and went in the trailer to start supper.

While supper cooked, I started the bubble bath and called in Baby Girl.  When she got to the door, I realized that she weighed about three pounds more than she had when she went outside — three pounds of dirt!  I stripped her at the front door and marched her down the hall, throwing the beyond-redemption clothing at the open lid of the washing machine as we passed it.  The clothes fell into the empty washer, but not without a few “clinks” and “tings” as they went down.  I just assumed she’d had rocks in her pockets, which was a common occurrence in our house.  But you know what assuming does (makes an “ass|u|me”), don’t you?  We laughed and played at bath time until all the bubbles were gone, so it wasn’t until after Baby Girl was bathed, dressed in jammies and ready for supper that I walked back up the hallway past the washer.  THAT’S when I saw a brigade and two battalions of “rocks,” i.e., rolly-pollies, climbing up and out of the washing machine.  And all over the walls and that yucky shag carpet in the hallway!  “But I wanted the ‘wowy-powies’ to have a bettuh home dan de dirt, Mommy!” she innocently told me, batting those big, blue eyes.

I must have left out something in the 12-Step Bug Counseling session.

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This week’s entry in Courting Georgia is the Stewart County Courthouse in Lumpkin, Georgia.  The original courthouse built in 1895, burned in 1922 and was replaced by the current courthouse in 1923.  It is a two-story brick Classical Revival-style courthouse.  The front and rear facades are identical, each with four Tuscan columns.  It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.

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Johnnie Wright Lewis, author of 62+ books and a former resident of Marietta and Cordele, GA, and her husband, Jimmy, travel the USA in their Prius, stopping to see whatever they can.  Follow them on Facebook at “Two Old Farts Traveling” and watch the many videos of their travels, in an RV, on YouTube under the same name.  Look for Johnnie’s books on Amazon.com under the name of Johnnie W. Lewis.