UPBEAT TIMES, INC. • October 2016 • 7


Whether we think of Disney’s blonde beauty and her pumpkin


carriage or Marissa Meyer’s recent recasting of ‘Cinderella’ as a cy-


When Your Child Is Sick by Gabriel A. Fraire ~ gafraire@comcast.net


Healdsburg, CA. ~ When


your children get sick you do all you can for them. Before you realize it, you’re fl uff- ing their pil- lows and run- ning back and forth getting ginger ale or soup. I even moved the television into my daughter’s room so she could watch. All that’s okay except if one child is sick, of course, the


other one, the one that’s not sick, wants the same spoiling treatment. Unfortunately, she doesn’t lie quietly in bed like the sick one.


While I was on the phone trying to reschedule my day, my youngest came up to me and started talking non-stop.


The Punitentiary #1


When kissing fl owers, tulips are better than one.


The raisin wined about how he couldn’t achieve grape- ness.


The farmer was surprised when his pumpkin won a blue ribbon at the State Fair. He shouted, ‘Oh, my gourd.’


If we canteloup lettuce marry!


Now that they allow us to wear jeans at the offi ce everyday, I am no longer a slacker.


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If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door. ~Milton Berle UPBEAT TIMES, INC. • October 2016 • 7


Happy Hour M-F


I was trying to hear the phone conversation and my daugh- ter’s at the same time. You’d think with two ears you could hear two things at once. But I couldn’t. I just said to my daughter, all right, all right. She smiled and went away. Then I was hit with this parental ter- ror. One of your children has just said something you


didn’t understand and you said all right.


Parents must learn how to quickly get off the phone when deep inside they feel this panic after having unwit- tingly agreed to nuclear melt- down or some other equally threatening event.


One time when I had agreed to something, one my daugh- ters said, that I didn’t under- stand I went outside to fi nd my kids and their friends using all our toilet paper to have toilet paper races down the driveway.


Between nursing my sick


daughter, corralling my well daughter, and rescheduling my day, things got pretty hec- tic. I was very close to feel- ing sorry for myself when my youngest came inside with a wild fl ower. “Here daddy it’s for you, for working so hard.” Sorry for myself? Not a chance. I’m the luckiest guy in the world.


T ese columns are excerpts


from the book Daddy I Need to Go Potty by Gabriel A.


Fraire. Fraire has been a writer more than 45 years. He can be reached through his website: gabrielfraire.com


INSTANTLY 3pm-6pm


borg in the young adult novel ‘Cin- der,’ we know that there are count- less modern retellings of the tale.


Marie Rutkoski


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