Slim Randles' Home Country

The stronger winds of March

[February 11, 2015]  Mabel Adams was out the other day, with her new walker, the one with the basket on it, and a seat for sitting when she gets tired. It’s a purple kind of walker and she likes it. It has hand brakes, too, just like a bicycle.

She was headed for the Curl Up ‘N Dye beauty salon to get her permanent renewed, and she had to pass by the elementary school on her way.

And there were half a dozen kids trying to get kites to fly in the gentle breezes of February.

They can’t wait, she thought, for the stronger winds of March. They’ll run and the kites will billow up behind them, but they’ll have to stop short of the chain link fence, and the kites will flutter down like spent butterflies. She could read their minds, of course. Hey, maybe if I run faster … Mabel smiled and shook her head.

Can’t wait for March. Childhood is like that. It’s a can’t-wait time. When you’re eight years old, time crawls by so very slowly. It takes forever to become eight and a half. Lifetimes. Why, when you’re eight, and you finally make it to eight and a half, you’ve accumulated a wealth of learning and experience in those six months. Well, in those five months, anyway, because you can’t wait for six months, so you declare you’re eight and a half at five months.

Push it. Hurry up. Make the winds of Spring come sooner. Won’t I ever be eight and three quarters? Will my birthday never come? School will be out for the summer in May, but by May, I’ll probably be grown up.

Mabel waved to the kids and they “Hi Mrs. Adams’d” her and went back to their play.

If only, she thought … if only the time went by as slowly for me, instead of racing along.

[Text from file received from Slim Randles]

Ol' Jimmy Dollar is Slim Randles' first children's book.  The book is for kids K-3rd grades and is even better when parents read it with children.  Ol' Jimmy Dollar makes for sweet dreams and if you have a dog even better.  Available now on Amazon.