“Where meat go, Daddy?” young Son questions Father

Tom Turkey

“Where meat go, Daddy?” young Son questions Father is a humorous little story from another part of my life stream that bears telling these many years later, in hopes it will bring a smile both to your own and to my son’s face if he happens to stumble across this posting one day.

Having moved my young family at the time to another community for purposes of a golden business opportunity, my first wife and I were out house shopping in the company of our young two year old son and a local real estate agent.

The agent had taken us to a property for sale consisting of five acres and a brand new home located on a hillside overlooking a picturesque road winding into the hills.

As we stood near the property’s edge overlooking the road my son and I were a few paces behind my wife and the agent, who was describing the area in some detail to my wife’s attentive ear.

Across the road was an older home on its own lovely piece of property that happened to include a duck pond filled with domestic ducks and geese, as well as a driveway crowded with vehicles. My son and I had immediately noticed the activity in the duck pond and were looking in that direction as the agent was giving his spiel.

Suddenly both my son’s eyes and my own were riveted on the sight of an absolutely enormous home-grown tom turkey that happened to waddle out from among those parked vehicles, who then proceeded to gobble and peck the gravel all around for whatever morsels had drawn his fancy.

I glanced instinctively down towards my young son to gauge his reaction and was amused to see his jaw had dropped wide open in amazement, and that it remained locked in that position as he fixated on the sight of this gigantic bird across the way.

It continued pecking and gobbling its way along the drive for a couple of minutes before deciding to leave, and soon disappeared again between the parked vehicles.

I had continued observing my young boy’s reactions from the corner of my eye during these events, and turned my face fully to see what his reaction would be to its disappearance.

My boy leaned forward, then leaned forward even further still as though to will the bird back into his sights, mouth still agape in frank wonder at what he’d seen before finally leaning back upright and turning his eyes-wide-open gaze upwards towards my now openly smiling face.

Keep in mind as you picture this that I hadn’t spoken a word to him during the whole time these events were taking place, yet the first words from his mouth demonstrated his perfect and pure two-year-old understanding of what it was that he’d seen.

“Where meat go, Daddy?” young son questions father as visions of that big bird plucked, cooked and sitting on our dining room table in delicious golden brown glory began its rampant dance through both of our heads at his young words of questioning and understanding wonder.