Summary: Can a young neighbor show Lee the upside to doing home repairs?
 
 
 
 

OUT OF THE MOUTH OF BABES-5

By Becky C.

(Rockville, Maryland 1989)

For the third time in five minutes, Lee Stetson mumbled a small curse as he glared at an outside faucet that was determined not to be fixed. Was it just his imagination or could the old leaky head seemingly take pleasure in defying his every attempt to remove it and install a new one? If ever a faucet had an agenda of its own, it was this one.

Buying a new house seemed so right at the time. It was a fresh start for their new family, which now included five-month-old Jennifer. However, "new" turned out to be a relative term with Lee quickly learning that "no major repairs" did not seemingly shorten the number of odd jobs on Amanda's "Honey Do" list.

The sky was a clear blue, and a gentle spring breeze was blowing. He could think of many other things he'd rather be doing, but their water bill was already high enough due to Phillip's new desire to take at least two showers a day in order to look just right for the pretty teenage girl down the road.

As Lee checked his skinned knuckles one more time, Kelly, their next-door neighbor's four-year-old daughter, rode up on her bike. Lee had recently helped her mother get her kitten out of a tree resulting in his first experience with four-year-old hero worship, something he wasn’t quite sure how to handle.

She was a sweet but very articulate child who managed to voice some very adult thoughts, which usually took him totally by surprise. Most of the time, he really did not mind her company. She usually stayed out of his way when he worked; and when he was too busy to talk, she moved off and adored from a distance.

Today was different. Today she felt the need to discuss why butterflies were so pretty and yet ate "dead things". In her opinion, only ugly animals should eat "dead things". At first Lee tried to humor her, but the stubborn faucet was really getting on his nerves and so was having to answer questions to a continual "Why?". As he turned to give her a rather exasperated request for quiet and solitude, Kelly chimed up, "You don't like what you're doing very much do ya?"

"No, I don't," Lee answered rather abruptly.

"My Uncle Willie doesn't like to do stuff like that either. That's why he lives in an apartment. Have you ever lived in an apartment?"

"Yes," Lee grumbled. "I've lived most of my life in some type of an apartment, and your Uncle Willie is right. You don't have to do this type of work. It’s one of the benefits of living there."

"When you lived in an apartment, were you married and did you have the baby?" she continued.

"No, I wasn't. I never had to fix leaky faucets, mow grass, or wash windows or anything like that until I got married and lived in a house. Now look Kelly, I'm really busy, and I really don't have time for questions. Could you run along home now please?" Lee asked with his last ounce of patience. //Where were this child's parents?//

"OK," she said. "But could you just answer one more question? My mom calls Uncle Willie a free wheeling bachelor who spends too much time thinking about women. She calls him a lot more, but I have to listen with my ear up next to the door to hear it cause she makes me leave the room. Are all people who live in apartments like Uncle Willie?"

By this time Lee had resigned himself to either finishing the conversation or yelling for help from Amanda. "No, Kelly, not everyone who lives in an apartment is like your Uncle Willie. An apartment is a type of place to live. It has nothing to do with the type of person you are. In fact, there are a lot of families just like yours that live in apartments. It all depends on what the adults think is the best choice for them at that time." Lee hoped this explanation would end the questions or at least steer them away from the more personal ones.

For a moment he thought he had succeeded, however, Kelly had one more question to be answered. "So some families live in apartments, huh?"

Lee gave a weary nod of his head.

"But yours doesn't," she continued very thoughtfully.

Lee shook his head "No".

"Why?" she piped up with a four-year-old's tenacity to discover an important truth.

Taking a deep breath, Lee tried to remind himself that Amanda had suggested that being around Kelly would be good practice for "the real thing".

"When I was growing up, I lived in army barracks and moved around a lot. I always planned to have a house and horses when I got married and had a family. Also, Mrs. Stetson and the boys were use to living in a house, and when we found this one we both thought our family would enjoy living here."

Kelly straightened up on her bicycle and took a deep breath. "Well, it seems to me that you have a choice. Either you live in an apartment where you don't have any of these problems or you live in a house with your family and have to fix drippy faucets and stuff." Drawing herself up as tall as she could she looked very seriously at Lee and continued, "That's what my dad says is taking the good with the bad". Just as quickly as she had gotten serious, her face lit up in a smile as she waved "Bye" and rode off towards her own driveway.

Lee leaned up against the house in stunned silence. So intently was he watching Kelly ride away that he didn’t notice Jamie come up beside him. "Lee? Lee! What’s goin’ on?"

Lee looked up at his stepson and then over at the still leaking faucet. Giving Jamie a small smile, he again applied pliers to the faucet and said, "Would you believe I'm learning to appreciate leaky faucets?"

Giving him a classic "who can understand grownups" look, Jamie headed out to play basketball. Somewhere in the background he heard a muffled "Ouch" and decided to increase his pace… just in case Lee decided he needed to share this newfound appreciation with someone else. One could never be really sure about adults. They were hard to figure out at times.

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