So, quick survey – how many of you are reading this wondering how I will relate this to family history!?!?
I’ve been putting together a book of stories from when my sister’s children were young. We call it “The Mouser Family Absolutely True Stories.” I wrote down many of these stories back before there were so many cool ways to put words and pictures in books to share. These are just all in a word document. So, now I am gathering pictures and trying to make them into something to share.
This is the story I am working on today and I just couldn’t resist blogging it as well.
When my sister’s two girls were about 3 and 5, the older one could torment the life out of the younger one just by what she said. One of Kyli's favorite times to tease her little sister was when they were in the car. I guess sitting there in those car seats had to be pretty boring because before too long, Kyli would look over at her sister and say (very quietly), “You have a swan on your head.” Codi would immediately wail, “Mommy, Kyli says I have a swan on my head. I don’t waaaaaannnt a swan on my head!!!” Very often actual tears would ensue. My sister could try to reason with Codi but it didn’t really matter because Kyli SAID the swan was there. Of course Kyli would just sit there with an angelic look on her face. Sometime it would be a dinosaur or even an inanimate object that would be “on” Codi’s head. The results were always the same however. Over the years as we’ve re-told the story – as family’s will – it’s always the swan we use to tell the tale. As adults, we laugh at how gullible poor little Codi was to fall for something so silly. How could something her big sister said override the obvious fact that there WAS NO SWAN? Yet as adults we do the same thing all our lives – we believe that one bad thing someone else says no matter how many others tell us it isn’t so. We even spend time worrying about that stupid swan and refuse to listen to those we know are “older and wiser” who tell us that really, we do NOT have a swan on our head!
It’s become something of a proverb in our family now, “Don’t let someone else put a swan on your head.”
