Excerpt from (St. Paul Pioneer Press) Bulletin Board, August 11, 2004

The Permanent Sisterly Record

Poet X of PDX: "Reading the story from IGHGrampa about the 5-year-old and the oscillating sprinkler tickled something in my memory. It took awhile to come up with the whole picture.

"A couple years ago, my dad recorded the early-'60s home movies onto a VCR; this moment is captured there:

"Probably 2 or 3 years old, my sister approaches the lawn sprinkler just as it aims in her direction and gets her in the face. She backs away, and the water backs the opposite direction away. She hesitates and approaches the sprinkler just in time to again get a dousing. She backs away. After two or three approaches, she arrives at a practical end to the surprises and sits on the sprinkler, pretty peach dress and all."

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