My Uncle Mike, staring down at my baby sister Jean, long ago, commented, “Look at that squatty body.”
I was just walking down the sunny sidewalk in Hoboken, where I live, and came across a small group of very small children, accompanied by their parents, trick-or-treating up and down Washington Street in the broad daylight. These kids were 3 and 4 years old. So we are talking some very sqatty bodies. There was a little waddling fireman, a little waddling fairy princess, a little waddling Spider Man. They were so cute that you wanted to just eat them up. Their chattery mouse voices filled the air. Many of them, as the soup vendor put candies into their plastic pumpkin baskets, called out, in mousey sing-song, “Thank you!” A couple of kids forgot this very important nod to the social graces, so busy were they oogling their Snickers bars and Sour Patch Kids. Then, inevitably, a grownup voice would remind them: “What do you say?” After a brief pause, the little Weeble fireman called out, “Thank you!”
My heart cracked at the sight of these little beings. This bevy of squatty bodies.
