Of the thousands of people I have met over the course of a life time, Heidi may have been the most intent, stubborn, and determined one of all. Just didn’t trust us, those awful forgetful parents of hers! Mind you, she would NEVER forget something so all-important as setting a clock for the morning.
But we did.
The poor thing was frantic the next morning racing through the house, pulling/throwing clothes out of the dresser, shoes every which way, book bag loaded. She barely had time to swallow a banana-eggnog for breakfast before she ran yelling all the way down the hill to the bus-stop.
Obviously, her parents were cut of an inferior cloth. Poor child. She had to take it on herself to run the place because we were SO incompetent! Oh – how we giggled that night! The Cosmic Commander had returned... and with a vengeance. All of it focused for the moment on one wind-up Snoopy alarm clock.
CLICK. BRRRRRIIINNNGGGGG!
“Heidi – cut it out! We’ll set your clock! Promise. We won’t forget.”
Didn’t matter. CLICK. BRRRRRIIINNNGGGGG. Over and over that night until we thought it would never end. My, she was determined. Apparently she determined to stay awake long enough, because when we did go in later, the clock was set. Same thing happened the next night, only she was so tired by then she could not outl
ast that pesky clock.
A confident child? Oh, yes. Her preschool teacher at the Learning Tree, Sue Wakefield, administered a number of tests near the end of the year to gauge readiness for Kindergarten and so on. She sat across the table from us as we talked.
Without looking at us, she fixed her eyes on the pile of papers in front of her and picked them up. She turned them to one side, tapped them down, then turned them to the other side and tapped them down again. Her eyebrows pulled together as she continued to stare. She took a deep breath and held it a moment. Then let it out.
“Well,” she said, words short and clipped. “I never thought I would say this about a child, but...
” The words stopped a moment. “...Heidi has almost too much self-confidence!”
And Heidi actually believed she could do anything she set her mind to, although we never said such a thing to her, realists that we were. And more so, she seemed to often believe she truly knew better than anyone else. The problem of course, was with us. We just “did not get it” at times. To her head tossing frustration, sometimes her logic simply eluded us.