tee tee and the banshee discuss her 2009 goals

It was New Year’s evening at my brother’s house. Pizza dinner was over, paper plates tossed, and The Banshee and I were just hanging out at the table.

“So, Banshee,” I said, “have you thought about your New Year’s resolutions?”

She furrowed her pale brow at me. “What’s a resolution?”

“Oh, well, it’s like a goal. Something you’d like to do or accomplish in the new year.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“So can you think of anything — anything you really want to do in 2009?”

“Uhhh ….. nooo.” Her eyes narrowed at me.

So, randomly, I began offering suggestions.

“Hm. I’ll bet you want to …… learn how to change Baby Banshee’s diaper?”

“Ew. No!”

“Maybe you want toooo ….. live inside a log?”

“Tee Tee! No!”

“Hm. I’ll bet you want to …. sleep on a bed of wet noodles?”

She wrinkled her nose in disgust. “TEE TEE!”

“I’m just trying to help,” I shrugged. “Can you think of something?”

Her little face screwed up in concentration.

“Well …. I wanna grow taller!”

“Grow taller? That’s good. Why don’t we get a pen and write these down?”

Her eyes lit up. Suddenly, she was all over that. She scurried into the kitchen, rummaging in a drawer until she found a pen and note pad. At first, she wanted to do the writing, which she can do, a little bit, but then decided I’d be faster at it. So I labeled the top of the paper Banshee’s 2009 Resolutions and wrote Grow Taller in the number one position with a flourish.

Something had clicked for her somehow. As I pointed and read it to her, her eyes glowed with delight, but when I asked her for another one, her face faltered, puckered. She couldn’t think of one. So I started again with my weird random suggestions. If I hit on something she didn’t like, she scrunched her nose and, pfffft, it was gone; if I mentioned something she did like, she crowed a huge “Yeaah!” and I wrote it down. We went on like this at great length until we had a list of ten goals.

So I present to you now …. The Banshee’s 2009 Resolutions:

(Well, um, as prompted by me, Tee Tee)

1. Grow taller

2. Learn to drive a car

3. Learn to ride an elephant

4. Make a TV from a cardboard box (she was very excited about this one, who knew?)

5. Be in a Broadway show

6. Run my own movie theater

7. Learn to make hats

8. Learn to make chocolate cake

9. Grow my own vegetables — tomatoes, carrots, and lettuce (she was quite adamant on the choice of those three, specifically)

10. Learn to make my own salad dressing

Once the list was done, I ahem-ed loudly to the rest of the room and helped her in a David Letterman-like reading of her 2009 goals. Once that was done, she grabbed her “phone” — an old non-working cell phone — and proceeded to call everyone she knew in the whole entire world to inform them of her list, like this:

fake rinng fake rinnng …..

“Oh, hi, Cal. This is The Banshee. May I speak to Sienna? (Hahaha. I loved how she had to ask for Sienna.) Hi, Sienna. I have a list of goals you need to hear. Umm …. I want to ….. uh, Tee Tee? What’s the first one?”

“Grow taller.”

“Yeah. Grow taller. And thenn ….. um, what’s the next one?”

“Learn to drive a car.”

“Oh! Yeah! Learn to drive a car!”

And on it went through the phone call, with me prompting her through the list, but by the time she “called” her cousin Piper, she could say them all, no problem.

“And Piper, I wanna grow my own vegetables, too! Tomatoes and carrots and lettuce! Okay. ‘Bye, Piper!”

I had to ask.

“So how did that go?”

“Good.”

“What did Piper think of your list?”

“She said it was great.”

“That’s awesome.”

“Yeaah!”

She beamed at me and scampered off to post her list on the fridge.

But, frankly, she’s on her own on that cardboard box TV.