Learning

Short story by Julian Hebbrecht  

“Daddy, what’s a scrooge?”

I lowered my newspaper and looked at my seven-year-old daughter sitting on the carpet, a few feet away from my armchair. “Where did you hear that word, dear”? I asked.

“It’s here on this magazine,” she said, pointing at a fat headline about one of our prominent industrialists.

My little daughter has an inquiring mind. I like that in children. I encourage learning. I also encourage independence, especially when I am reading my newspaper. “Why don’t you look it up in the dictionary, dear?” I said with a smile. “I’m sure it’s in there.”

She loves browsing through my dictionary or through the volumes of our home encyclopedia and asking questions about the wondrous things she finds there.

Enthusiastically she pulled out the dictionary onto the carpet and began leafing through it, looking for ‘scrooge’. I went back to my sports paper. 

“Dad, what’s a character?”

‘HavÑe you looked up ‘scrooge’ already?” I asked from behind my sports pages.

“Yes. A character in the Dickens’ novel  ‘A Christmas Carol’  it says.”

“Well, a character is a person, dear, someone in a story or a movie.” Hoping that was the last of her questions, I went back to my paper.

“Daddy, what’s the dickens?”

I lowered my newspaper. “It’s not a ‘what’, dear, it’s a ‘who’. Dickens, Charles Dickens, was a writer who wrote many beautiful stories and became very famous.”

”Oh.”

The word ‘stories’ has a magical effect on her, and I could already see the expectation in her eyes. I realized that there would be no escape. 

“Okay, okay,  I’ll tell you the story of Ebenezer Scrooge,”I said. 

So I began. I told her about the poor people of those days, how stingy Scrooge was, the three ghosts that came at Christmas and how Scrooge became so scared that he decided to change his life completely. When the story ended, her eyes were shining and  she was quiet for a while.

Happy childhood days, I thought. I picked up the paper again and continued my reading, feeling happy that I had performed my fatherly duty quite well.

“Dad, what’s a scrotum?”

My newspaper went down with a jolt. “Where did you hear that  word?”

“It’s here in the dictionary, the next word after Scrooge.”

I took a deep breath to give myself some time to come up with an answer to this one. I hate lying to a child, so after a moment’s thought I answered, “Well, it’s…err… a part of the body, dear,”not realizing that I had stepped on quicksand.

“Part of the body? Do I have a scrotum?”she asked innocently.

“No, no, no. Girls don’t have one,” I answered quickly. As soon as I had said that, I realized my mistake. I could see the next question already brewing in her mind. “It’s part of the body of… err…animals, yes, animals.” I added quickly.  Hiding behind the pages of my newspaper I took another deep breath, hoping that she would stop her enquiries.

“Does Benny have a scrotum?”

“Benny?” My paper went down again. I looked at her blankly.

“Yes, uncle Jasper’s dog.”

“Oh, Benny, err… well, I wouldn’t know, dear. Maybe he has one…, somewhere…, probably. 

I could feel my forehead getting sweaty. Like some cornered animal looking for a way out, my subconscious provided the answer. “Ice cream,” I said.  Even more magical than ‘stories’ are the words ‘ice cream.’ 

“I think, it’s time for a little something, as Pooh Bear would say,” I continued. Her face brightened and forgotten were all Scrooges and scrotums, and all other potentially embarrassing questions. Thank God, I thought, that her questions still can be smothered in ice cream. But for how long, I wondered, for how long?

Hand in hand we went to the kitchen.

End