Hamden Hall Country Day School - Perennial Pine Yearbook (New Haven, CT)

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PROCRASTINATION Have you ever tried to compel a keen and resourceful youngster to be in bed at a certain hour? It is a task. Every time I take care of Patricia Rowe, a ten year old master in the art of procrastination, I am forced to face this problem. Promptly at 8:45 I announce, UPat, it's time for bed.U Promptly I receive the reply, WUh, just let me hear the end of 'Truth or Consequence'.W It is not necessary for her to be in bed until 9:00 so I allow her to hear the end of the program. As the last second of the advertising is completed, I rise from my armchair, switch off the radio, and tell her, WOkey, up you go.H A grunt is the answer. Five minutes tick off on the clock, during which Pat feigns interest in Dorothy Dix and Elsie Robinson, and re-reads the advertisements. She eyes me slyly and queries WAren't these shoes awful cute?H Thus she hopes to inveigle me into conversing about clothinq, a topic which is good for at least ten minutes. I terminate the dis- cussion there. By this time it is 9:15 and my patience is wearing a little thin. npatln HWhat?U HYou know what.W WHunh?U - this innocently. WUpstairs, P.D.Q.N UWhat's P.D.Q.?U UPretty darn quick, and I mean it.N So Pat sluggishly mounts the stairsg five minutes later I follow and find her freckled nose deep in a NNancy Drewn mystery book. HPatricia Roweln HI was just finishing this chapter,N she apologizes, WI've only got a few pages to go.U UPut it away. Did you brush your teeth and wash?N WNot yet,W she says humbly. UGO do it.n

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This is accomplished after a good bit of dawdling over toilet articles, and she is finally in bed. The time? 9:25 I reach for the light button, snap it off, turn to go out,,and a voice from the bed says dubiously,nRead me the rest of the ehapter?n I acquiesce, and suffer with the heroine while she is shot at, gets shut in a subterranean passage, and is accused lfalsely, of coursel of kidnapping. Then.1nere comes the inevitable drink. After this, I return down the stairs, exasperated, muttering in my beard, and with a better understanding of Why Mothers Get Gray. Carolyn Bushell !43 BRITISH.NIGHTMARE Ten o'clock and so far there has been no air raid alarm. Is it possible that the Germans are net going to bomb us tonight? My mother, lying there in the cor- ner, suffering from serious shrapnel she received only last night in the three hour raid, is calling for my father, He is off somewhere fighting the Germans, per- haps in Africag perhaps even here in England. We have not heard from him for over four months. Mother is still more delirious. Now she seems to be recalling old days when she and my father went to Paris for their honeymoon, and that long trip on the continent just when Hitler was coming into power. I can't quite make out her words. They are fast and incoherent. She is recalling the good old days in Ger- many when people spoke as they desired, and sang with each other over a friendly stein of beer. But the lights of these days were suddenly put out by Hitler and his new form of government. Mother is becoming more restless. It is getting later. Are the Germans- ------ --? There go the sirens. --- D The p1anes!J.1J2 Marilyn Shearer '46