The Story of Baby Dinger

Betsy and Bob Dinger were always the object of snide remarks because they had a lot of children. An even twelve - six boys and six girls. Their neighbours said they must have been strong believers in equality and fervent practicing Catholics.

Others said they could run two hockey or basketball teams. Or one soccer or baseball team. And as the children grew that's exactly what Betsy and Bob Dinger did. Although they favoured fielding a baseball team as several of their children were great hitters and were capable of knocking a few family namesakes out of the park - that is to say dingers.

Then one day the unexpected happened. Although after twelve children I guess it shouldn't be unexpected. Betsy was pregnant with child number thirteen.

Dave Dinger, Doug Dinger, Donald Dinger, Dick Dinger, Ducky Dinger, Duane Dinger and their sisters Diane Dinger, Dahlia Dinger, Dakota Dinger, Daisy Dinger, Debbie Dinger and Donna Dinger were going to have a brother or sister.

As summer turned to fall and baseball season gave way to trips to the hockey arena Betsy finally had her baby - a girl. Bob and Betsy thought a daughter Dinger was just fine.

After several weeks it quickly became evident that this child was different. Betsy loved to sing to her newest child as she would rock her to sleep. The odd thing was Doris Dinger - that's what Betsy and Bob named her - would wheeze along with the tune. It wasn't that she had trouble breathing but that she seemed to murmur along to any tune Betsy sang to her. Bob, passing by the nursery door one night was shocked to hear mother and child singing and purring and he stopped in the doorway, peeked in the room and whispered to Betsy "Whoa, that's some humdinger we've got there!"

The prompt at Two Word Tuesday is humdinger/dilly this week. And that was a dilly of an effort to reach that pun.

The Polka Dot Door

A long time ago, when I was 22, my first child was born. That kid grew up on a little Canadian kid's show called Polka Dot Door, produced by the TV Ontario network. And Dad, more often than not, sat through those shows with his little one. Nine or so years later when a brother, and a year after that when a sister came along number one son was moving on to Knight Rider and The Dukes of Hazzard. But there was a nice overlap where his siblings picked up where he had left off with Polka Dot Door. And Dad was right there to welcome them. So you're looking at a Polka Dot Door veteran. The show began in 1971 and ran to 1993. I didn't watch the full run but I did get in my fair share. The formula was pretty simple. A young male and female host, which seemed to change every week, sang songs, told stories, made crafts and generally did their best stimulate little brains. The show opened as follows... Imagination Day! Oh boy! ...

30 Days of Photos III #4 Sour

Check out Ziva's Inferno for the rest of today's photos.

It's For You

I'm going to show my age here - and at my age be thankful that's all I'm going to show - but I can recall growing up as a kid in Toronto and we had one telephone in the house. It was a wall-mounted, black rotary-dial affair behind the door in our kitchen. If you stretched the cord you could actually sit down at the kitchen table while you talked on the phone. This was in the mid-50s, hardly on the heels of the device's invention, nevertheless - having been patented by Alexander Graham Bell in 1876 - it was still in it's formative years. Coloured models, the Princess phone, and the push button model were all yet to come, to say nothing of wireless home phones and the cell phone. The telephone, by the way, figured prominently in comedian Bob Newhart's early stand-up routine. In the late 50s/early 60s Newhart made his mark using a telephone as a prop and having hilarious one-sided conversations. It was a device he used for years. The telephone also played a ce...

nonamedufus

Search This Blog