Socially Unacceptable

I remember when Mom and Dad had people over. We were to remain quiet, and not bother anybody. One of those, "Children should be seen, not heard" type of things. Not that Mom and Dad were by any means nasty about things like that. I think it was just a noise control mandate that you have to implement when you have seven children.

I was pretty good about it. I mean, when you know you have a spanking coming if you don't, it sort of inspires you to keep your lips zipped.

And as I am raising my own little brood, I have tried to instill polite behavior in my children. They are very good at saying their pleases and thank yous (we're just working on the volume thing now. Everybody in my house apparently speaks just below a yell...I wonder where they got that from...). We have trouble now and again with six-year-old interruptions (he apparently still thinks he's king), but for the most part, the kids are pretty okay about not being crazies (most of the time).

Yesterday, we had some people over (our home teachers). Joshua valiantly tried not to overwhelm his new subjects, and Eva shyly piled herself into my lap with her purse, blanket, and naked baby doll. I tried to inspire her to wrap her baby up (not that it bothered me, but I wasn't sure how our visitors felt about nude infants), but she had other plans for that doll, which she didn't share with me, so she kept the baby the way it was.

We chatted with the two gentlemen for a while, and then we got down to the lesson. Joshua couldn't stand that we weren't talking about something more exciting, and got sent to his room for being impolite.

Eva quietly sat on the couch and gave googly eyes to the two nice men.

I turned my focus back to the discussion at hand, and didn't notice what was going on under my chin.

After talking, very seriously, about spiritual things, I glanced down at my little lady. She was still giving googly eyes to the two nice men, and was also lustily licking her naked baby doll's rear end.

"EW, EVA! STOP THAT!" I exclaimed in a whisper, and hurriedly threw the offending doll over my shoulder behind the couch.

I have NEVER seen her do something like that before. I don't know where she got it from, or if she just thought it was a good idea at the time, but apparently the home teachers didn't notice. Or maybe they were just being polite. Or maybe they are just used to three-year-old little girls licking naked doll bottoms.

I can sorta see why children weren't allowed at public gatherings 200 years ago (there must have been an epidemic of astronomical size of doll lickings). Perhaps you were only allowed to "come out" after you had left your eccentricities behind you...Or at least got good at hiding them.