Puddle Predilections

Did you know--if the Colonel knew, he had forgotten--that a four-year old boy and his two-year old brother can be in nine places at the same time? Did you also know that little boys have mud puddle seeking radar in their nose cones? And, did you know that if shod in knee-high rubber boots to keep his feet dry and granted granddaddy's permission to play in mud puddles, a little boy will, within fifteen seconds of arrival in the vicinity of a mud-puddle, progress rapidly through the five phases of play beginning with stomp-splash and ending with flop-splash.

Flop-splash has two variants--full frontal, and seated.

A little boy would rather wallow in a mud puddle than do just about anything else on the planet. It's a predilection shared with pigs and Marine infantrymen, so, in the Colonel's grandsons' case, they come by it naturally--the Colonel having been the latter and oft called the former.

The taste of Spring-like weather this week also brought with it some relatively warm rain and the Colonel and the Hope of 21st Century Civilization spent a good part of each day in muddy chores and splashing play, respectively. The Tallahatchie Free State edition of the digital encyclopedia known locally as Redneckipedia contains the same descriptive definitions for the concepts of "dangerous" and "multi-tasking," to wit: "Standin' in ankle deep mud, runnin' a chain-saw in the wood-lot, while keepin' one eye and one ear on the whereabouts and intowhats of two cabin-fever possessed pre-schoolers recently released from winter-time house arrest. "

The Colonel is looking forward to the day when the grandsons are old enough to do the chores so that he can play in the mud.