How Old Are You?
Sonny rode his shiny new red tricycle along the sidewalk in front of Shirley Duncan's house.
"How old are you?" she shouted to him from the steps of her front porch.
"Four," he yelled back.
Shirley’s older sister Peggy appeared behind the screen door.
"Hi there, Sonny! That your birthday present?"
"Un-huh."
"How old are you now?"
Sonny pedaled faster.
"What’s the matter? Don’t you know how old you are?"
"I do, too," he shot back, piqued. "I’m four!"
"What?"
"FOUR."
"How old?"
"FOUR!"
Peggy smiled and Shirley giggled.
"Mother said to come in for lunch,” Peggy said, turning to Shirley
Shirley stood up and went into her house.
Sonny pedaled on to Dorothy Ann Shipley’s. Leaving his tricycle on the sidewalk, he climbed the steps and rang the doorbell.
"Can Dorothy Ann come out and play?” he asked Mrs. Shipley.
"Hello, Sonny. She's eating lunch. She'll be finished in a minute."
Sonny was sitting on the swing suspended from the porch ceiling when Dorothy Ann joined him. She pushed the swing and hopped up beside him. She was pretty, he thought. Not quite as beautiful as red-headed Blanche Spann, but quite good-looking for a Yankee girl. Her coal-black hair and thick, shoulder-length curls matched the soft brows over her dark brown eyes.
"What’s lunch?" he asked as they swayed back and forth in the creaking swing.
"It’s what you eat after breakfast," came the knowledgeable reply of a six-year-old.
"After breakfast?"
"Yes."
"I don’t eat after breakfast."
"Yes, you do. Didn’t you eat a little while ago?”
"That wasn’t after breakfast."
"That was lunch."
"No, it wasn’t. It was dinner."
"Dinner is what you eat in the evening."
"That’s supper," Sonny said with conviction. Puzzled by Dorothy Ann's strange use of words, he asked, "What did you just eat?"
"A bacon-lettuce-and-tomato sandwich, a glass of milk and some cookies," she said. In his mind, Sonny compared this menu to his own midday meal of fried chicken, mashed potatoes, stringbeans boiled in fatback, iced tea with sugar and fresh mint leaves and egg custard for dessert. It dawned on him that Yankees not only called dinner by another name, theirs also tasted different from his own. When he had assimilated this new information, his thoughts turned to lighter things.
"Wanna play a game?" he said.
"Marbles?"
"For keeps?" he asked, reaching tentatively into the right-hand pocket of his shorts.
"Sure."
"Uh-uh. You always win," he said, withdrawing his hand from his pocket.
"I don’t wanna play marbles with you anyway. You still owe me a bunker and two aggies from last time. Wanna play checkers?"
"Okay," Sonny agreed.
Dorothy Ann went into the house and returned with the board and a box of checkers. They sat on the top step of the porch and put the pieces in place. She put a black checker in one hand and a white one in the other and held both hands behind her back.
"Choose," she said.
He pointed. It was her first move. When they were into their second game, her nearly-grown-up brother Buddy burst through the front door. He jerked to a halt when he saw the checkerboard on the floor.
"Hey, you kids oughta move that board to one side. Otherwise it’s gonna get knocked over."
Sonny realized that Buddy meant children when he said kids and did not correct him. It was unwise to correct grown-ups -- and nearly-grown-ups. Telling them you knew something they didn’t know usually drew some smarting remark like ‘Show-off’ or ‘You’re getting too big for your britches.’
Stretching his leg to step over the game, Buddy smiled and winked at his sister.
"How old are you, Sonny?" he asked with a grin.
Sonny scowled down at the checkerboard as if he had not heard. Buddy jumped down onto the concrete walkway, cut across the lawn and hurried off down the street.
When he had disappeared round the corner, Dorothy Ann put her hand under Sonny’s chin and gently lifted his head. She stared into his eyes.
"It’s ‘four,’ not ‘fo-ah’," she said softly.
"Huh?" Sonny grunted.
"You’re 'four' years old, not ‘fo-ah’."
"I gotta go home," Sonny said suddenly. He helped her put the checkers back in the box. "So long," he used the Yankee expression for ‘good-bye.’ He retrieved his tricycle and turned toward his house.
Pedaling steadily homeward, he mulled over his new knowledge. ‘Lunch’ for ‘dinner,’ ‘dinner’ for ‘supper,’ ‘kids’ for ‘children,’ ‘so long’ for ‘good-bye’ and ‘hi’ or ‘hello’ for ‘hey.’ Above all, ‘four’. Never ‘fo-ah’.
~The End~