Conversations: Concerning Foreign Governments

I was the family taxi driver, and Mr. TOF was along for the ride because there wasn’t a big person at home to supervise him.  I had extracted him from the yard of his favorite neighbors, the blue house neighbors, who let him play with their two large dogs, and let him help in their garden, and let him ride wheeled contraptions on their long flat driveway.  Mr. TOF really loves the blue house neighbors.  Best of all, he loves conversing with them.  I’m pretty sure he talks their ear off every time.  They are super patient people.

On the car ride to pick up his sibling, Mr. TOF started telling me all about how the blue house neighbors have a friend that live in the Land of Chicken, and how they aren’t able to visit that friend because her parents have to keep her safe because the guy who is in charge of the government there is a really nasty guy and spies on people.  So the friend can’t come visit here in Minnesota and the blue house neighbors can’t visit her because that would make the mean government man notice.

I had absolutely NO CLUE what the kid was talking about.  At first I thought he might be making up a crazy story, but he was so precise with some of the details.  I just kept saying, “uh huh . . . OK. . . . interesting  . . . ” and he kept talking.  Because this kid can talk.  A lot.

After about ten minutes it dawned on me that a few years ago that our blue house neighbors had a foreign exchange student from Turkey.

Me:  Are you talking about the girl who came to stay with the blue house neighbors from the country of Turkey?

Mr. TOF:  Yeah!  Turkey! That’s it!  Chicken . . . Turkey . . . mostly the same.