Wild Imagination

My dad called me yesterday, while he and my mom were at a museum with my niece and nephew. He said there was a little section that resembled a grocery store. Then my mom spoke up and said, "Kimberly...you would have loved it!"

You see, I had (have) a small infatuation with cash registers and played store A LOT when I was younger. In fact, when the fabric store that my mom worked at closed its doors, she bought one of the cash registers and gave it to me for my birthday. I remember the first day I had it, I woke up bright and early to play a round of store before school started. The cash register was against the shared wall between the living room and my sister's bedroom. It only took a matter of seconds before my sister came out and yelled, "Shut up!" The sound of "cha ching" must not be very appealing at 7:30 in the morning.

The end of summer was always the best time to play store, since I had several new outfits (with the tags still attached!) that I could use as merchandise. I went as far as making fake checks, asking for the blue pens that I noticed retail shops had, and making sure I had a wedding ring and fake nails on. No detail was forgotten.

So it's no surprise that The Lime has the exact imagination I have.

He can always be seen with his cowboy hat on, sometimes his fireman jacket, always his belt with his police scanner and his huge ring of keys, his cowboy boots, and multiple cell phones (for work and personal use).

When we were in San Francisco a few weeks back, he dropped the scanner and the clip on the back of it broke, thus preventing him from being able to hook it onto his belt. We tried putting it in his pocket but it just wouldn't stay. My mind was constantly turning, trying to think of what I could do to make it clipable again.

Last Saturday, we were cleaning out/organizing the garage and I came across a case for a pair of binoculars we got while on our cruise last year. The Lime had naturally claimed the binoculars as his own and didn't care an ounce about the case. When I found it on Saturday, the lightbulb went off in my head and I thought, "the radio!"

We grabbed The Lime's belt, slid it through the loop on the back of the case, and gently slid the radio in. Taa daa! It fit perfectly! And now The Lime is back in action.

My niece was over the other night and the kiddos were playing in The Lime's room. I went to check on them and found The Lime wearing his hard hat. He said, "I saw it up there so I climbed on my Mack truck, stood on my toy box and got it!" He's been into climbing lately...eeeekkk! But he looks so darn cute in the hard hat, even if he wears it backwards.

We can't go anywhere without The Lime in his full getup. He gets lots of stares and comments and often asks me, "Why is everyone looking at me?" Apparently a cowboy/fireman/ranger/worker man isn't the norm.

If only everyone had your wild imagination, kiddo!