From the Mouths of Babes

            I love when my two-year-old granddaughter, Olivia, comes to visit. I listen as she speaks, watch as she plays, and lately, at her request, print a map for her return home. She lives 2.6 miles away.

Olivia’s imagination seems endless and never more so than when she plays with her Little People Playsets. Her collection includes a Nativity scene, an airplane, a school bus, and a castle. Mary, quite appropriately, is always the mother.

Olivia causes her dad, Frank, distress by having Mary drive the school bus, which is filled with children, Disney princesses, and wise men. Monique, Olivia’s mother, takes it all in stride. She is just happy for the precious minutes when the child is occupied with “all her people,” as she says when she sits down to play. Only recently did Monique become concerned.

Olivia ran into the kitchen and told Monique, “I said a bad word!”

“What? What did you say?”                                                      

“My people wanted to go to a football game so I was taking them and one of them said, ‘Roll Tide.’ Daddy told me that’s a bad word!”

It’s true. Frank, a proud graduate of LSU, has trained his daughter to yell “Tiger Bait” whenever she hears “Roll Tide.”

Now if your college football allegiance lies elsewhere, rest assured you would still like Frank. When he asked my husband for his permission to marry Monique, Michael made him wait two weeks before deciding. At that point, Frank contacted Michael again and the next day, with our blessing, Frank proposed to Monique.

Frank is a patient, kind, and loving husband and father. There is not a single doubt in my mind that he will continue to protect, provide, and guide his two daughters Olivia and Charlie, and share the way for them to one day reach their Heavenly home.

But for Frank’s sake, while Olivia was taking her Little People to the football game, I hope it wasn’t baby Jesus who yelled, “Roll Tide.”

Ronny may be reached at rmichel@rtconline.com.