
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, November 13, 1995                   TAG: 9511140011
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

IT'S WITCHCRAFT

I LOVE to talk to kids. They always surprise me. I talk to kids every chance I get, even kids I don't know. Sometimes this puts me at odds with parents who've been carefully training their children not to talk to strangers. I'm sensitive to these good parents' wishes - and to the reasons for them. But I talk to their kids anyway. I just can't stop myself.

Last week, for instance, I had a trenchant conversation with a 4-year-old in a bookstore. This little boy has been ``working'' at the bookstore with his mother ever since he was born. I remember him in his crib, next to the magazine rack. I can't believe he's 4 already.

The other day, he was ``shelving'' books with Mom - riding in the bottom of the book cart, while she tended to shelves above him. Every time Mom slowed, he said, ``Don't stop now! Go faster!''

I couldn't resist. ``You've been working here a long time, haven't you?''

``I'm 4 years old,'' he told me. He held up four fingers.

``Now, that's a coincidence,'' I said. I held up four fingers twice. ``I'm 44 years old. Isn't that amazing?''

``No,'' he said.

Well, it seemed amazing to me.

He tilted his head to the side. He eyed me. ``How did you get so tall?'' he asked.

I was completely stumped. What a question! How did I get so tall?

``I guess you'd have to ask my father,'' I answered. ``He's tall, too.'' Then I lamented the particular can of worms I'd opened with that answer.

Fortunately for me, though, Mom understood whereof her bright son spoke. ``She probably drank all her milk when she was a little girl,'' Mom said.

I sighed a sigh of relief. And added, ``I also ate cabbage for lunch.''

The boy grimaced. And went off to do something else. For who in his right mind talks to some tall, old woman who relishes cabbage for lunch?

And that, I have to admit, is what I am. As further evidenced just yesterday in a doctor's waiting room.

I came in to find a little girl sitting at the room's low table, drawing a splendid picture. I complimented her on her work.

She beamed appreciation. She told me she was 5.

I asked her if she liked to draw a lot.

She said she did.

``Who is that you've drawn?'' I asked.

``Me!'' she crowed. Then she pointed out that she'd written her name on the picture so everyone would know who it was, and that she'd given the girl in the picture yellow hair, too, just like her own.

I admitted I should have noticed. I should have paid more attention.

Then she tilted her head slightly to the side and trained her bright eyes on me. ``You kinda look like a witch,'' she said.

I wasn't sure I understood her. ``I look like a witch?''

``Kinda,'' she said. With a sweetly disarming smile.

Of course, she's right. My wild grey hair sticks out in a thousand directions. I have a pointy chin. I eat cabbage for lunch, and I gleefully entice little boys and girls into terribly truthful conversations.

``You want to hear my witch laugh?'' I asked her.

And then I laughed it. High and wicked and nasal.

The little girl was delighted. Charmed. But the grown women in the room shifted nervously in their seats. They looked at one another askance. Then they went home and told their children, once again, with firmness, ``Don't talk to strangers!''

Monty S. Leitch is a Roanoke Times columnist.

by CNB