The Poky Little Puppy

It's time for another session of "Did you know?" about ME!

Did you know that my mother nicknamed me the Poky Little Puppy when I was little? Seriously. And funny enough, I wore the nickname with pride. I loved being associated with one of my favorite little kids books, even if the connotation was that I was, in fact, poky. (It's true; I get distracted easily and I do like to "smell the roses" along the way . . . just like the Poky Little Puppy! Plus I love dessert.)

I own this book and I have read it to Peter a number of times. It is quite a hilarious read, because the morale of 90% of the story is that if you're poky and thus don't get home until everyone else has been grounded and your mother is asleep, you get to eat all of the dessert--not just your portion, but everybody's!!! The other 10% (the last page of the book), the Poky Little Puppy is finally caught by his mother coming in late and he is the only one who doesn't get dessert this one time (which brings up parental issues, like, what is with the fact that the Dog Mom doesn't know that one of her puppies is missing? Does she not even know her own children? Is the group more important than the individual here? I mean, honestly . . .).

I love the old stories from back in the day when everything didn't have to be didactic and necessarily P.C. I mean, I love new kids books and I am all for pressing morality on my children when they least suspect it . . . but I do find a certain (maybe sick) pleasure in the now-taboo books of yesteryear. Like (in very small part) The Poky Little Puppy. And like The Tale of Peter Rabbit (talk about morbid! The second and third pages read: ". . . don't go into Mr. McGregor's garden./ Your father had an accident there; he was put in a pie by Mrs. McGregor." Lovely!). There are so many gems out there; I find it hilarious. And yes, I admit now that I think of it, most of them are teaching morality. They just hit you over the head with it rather than gently persuade . . . (i.e., if you disobey, you'll be eaten in a pie. Yikes!).

ANYWAY, this whole post started because I ate rice pudding last night. Correction, I MADE (for the first time ever) and ate rice pudding. And I'm eating some now. You see, the first dessert in The Poky Little Puppy is rice pudding. That's where I got the craving to have it again . . . from reading. And yes, the rice pudding is delicious. SOOO worth the 3 hours or so of cooking and cooling time (1.5 hours of cooking; 1.5+ hours of cooling).

Yum!!! (-Jocelyn)