Paul's "Ah-ha!" Moment

At breakfast this morning, in relation to nothing, Paul said, “You know how when you are grumpy, you can find something wrong with almost everything.”

Yea for Paul!!!

My little boys and I have been reading through Pooh this year, first Winnie-the-Pooh and now The House at Pooh Corner. Paul’s become disgusted with Eeyore the more we’ve encountered him. Not only is he gloomy and depressed, he is totally self-obsessed, though the master A. A. Milne is able to pull off showing Eeyore for what he is, while still amusing his readers at the same time. (In defense of Eeyore, he is quite lovable in his own way.)

Take this exchange, for example. Pooh and Piglet have found Eeyore’s ramshackle house, but they mistakenly think it is just a collection of sticks. They decide to use the sticks to build their friend, Eeyore, a house. Eeyore is aware of none of this and knows only that his house has gone missing.


“Hallo, Eeyore,” said Christopher Robin, as he opened the door and came out. “How are you?

“It’s snowing still,” said Eeyore gloomily.

“So it is.”

And freezing.”

“Is it?”

“Yes,” said Eeyore. “However,” he said, brightening up a little, “we haven’t had an earthquake lately.”

“What’s the matter, Eeyore?”

“Nothing, Christopher Robin. Nothing important. I suppose you haven’t seen a house or whatnot anywhere about?”

“What sort of a house?”

“Just a house.”

“Who lives there?”

“I do. At least I thought I did. But I suppose I don’t. After all, we can’t all have houses.”

“But Eeyore, I didn’t know. I always thought ---“

“I don’t know how it is, Christopher Robin, but what with all this snow and one thing and another, not to mention icicles and such-like, it isn’t so Hot in my field about three o’clock in the morning as some people think it is. It isn’t Close, if you know what I mean—not so as to be uncomfortable. It isn’t Stuffy. In fact, Christopher Robin,” he went on in a loud whisper, “quite-between-ourselves-and-don’t-tell-anybody, it’s Cold.”

“Oh, Eeyore!”

“And I said to myself” The others will be sorry if I’m getting myself all cold. They haven’t got Brains, any of them, only grey fluff that’s blown into their heads by mistake, and they don’t Think, but if it goes on snowing for another six weeks or so, one of them will begin to say to himself: ‘Eeyore can’t be so very much too Hot about three o’clock in the morning.’ And then it will Get About. And they’ll be Sorry.”

“Oh, Eeyore!” said Christopher Robin, feeling very sorry already.


Yea for A. A. Milne!!!

(And don’t miss out on his incomparable poetry volumes, When We Were Very Young and Now I am Six. )



Philippians 2: 14, 15 Do all things without grumbling or disputing; so that you will prove yourselves to be blameless and innocent, children of God above reproach in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you appear as lights in the world,

Comments

Rebecca Nugent said…
Your children never cease to amaze me!

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