Introverts

This article with two follow-up pieces by Jonathan Rauch, at the Atlantic Monthly, clearly and definitively describes those of my ilk: introverts.

"Caring for your Introvert"
"Introverts of the World, Unite!"
"The Introversy Continues"

A Story by a Four-Year-Old

Entiteld: "Wingnut, Would You Have This Cake?"
by my daughter
(composed orally to dad, who transcribed by hand)

The bad wingnut. He has red eyes, and catching Care Bear net. He cuts Care-a-Lot down. Then Crizzel the big-haired Care Bear robot bird flies down and he walks but he doesn’t walk. Wingnut has a bathroom nut and it’s light. He has a light behind his back and it makes him bad.

Care Bears went away. They went away from Wingnut. He says words like this: eh, eh, eh eh eh! Then he’s bad and mean and he catches some Care Bears. You saw a purple Care Bear with a heart necklace then Wingnut saw. Wingnut has one wheel. He drives around all over Care-a-Lot, and has one adventure.

Plastic corn. Now you breathe this cupcake. This orange breathes too. Read this fish crocodile with eyes and a fin. Plastic croissant. Glass pizza. Plastic toy soda bottle. I have another one: it says, plastic orange. Or this, what is this? Strawberry. A rubber potato. Glass potato: you put it in your mouth, and it makes a funny noise. A donut but it looks like a ring for a moon. It’s the planet of the Gebernia with all the same aliens. They smell like pastries. These french fries: you eat them, then you draw this carrot down.

Now Wingnut is driving to the tree and he is cutting it. Crizzel was making more power for Wingnut and Funshine was getting him to sleep. Funshine just got him. Then, when Wingnut got up he jumped right out of it! Then, Crizzel was the best of them all. He was in the Crizzel-Castle. He trapped himself again. He said, "So, you want to play checkers again?" He got back out of the window and just hung onto the slide at school.

Closet doors. Then, Grumpy just fixed Wingnut and he fell apart again and he gyrated in a circle, then he exploded and smoke came right out of him. I smell cut grass. My grass! Oh, it’s cut down. And I live with all my robots: Wall-e, Number 5, and September coloring-rain robot. He was best of them all. They can’t explain, and these trees are cut down. These trees are getting long again.

THE END

Turkey Crossing

This week my daughter began going to a summer school program for three hours in the morning, Monday through Thursday, at the edge of civilization in North Mankato. After I dropped her off this morning I was heading home, careening down Lookout Drive, when a large bird moseyed out from the foliage and into the road. At first I thought the bird was a peacock. But when I slowed and finally stopped, the dangling wattle clearly spelled out turkey. Okay. I waited for the turkey to wander out of the road. Another van was approaching, actually hauling ass uphill in the other lane. Not slowing down. Then a gaggle of chicks (if I had to guess, I’d say there were twenty of them) burped up from the grass and scattered aimlessly into the road. I had stopped; the oncoming van had not. The mother turkey seemed confused. The chicks seemed confused. I could hear them peeping. At what appeared to be the last moment, the oncoming driver braked. No birds were squashed. The man rolled down his window and ogled the turkeys, shaking his head as if they were trying to wash his windshield. By now the hen had returned to the brush from whence she came, but three or four chicks continued to run in circles. They peeped. They stood as tall as they could and looked around. They peeped some more. At last the chicks retreated in the proper direction, and joined their mother in the bushes.