Marcie "Mom" Glanzer's Column
Friday, April 29, 2005
Archives
4.7.05 4.14.05
So you thought you knew Ryan!!
Most of you who take the time to check out Ryan's website, probably feel you
have a pretty good grasp on who he is...a friendly, fairly smart, comical and
good looking fellow. But few know of his humble beginnings, which is the topic
of my latest column. Ryan started out as a shy, quiet little boy. He was quite a
"momma's boy" and didn't care for riding in the tractor, or wrestling. He
preferred drawing pictures and reading books...but behind this cute exterior was
a little brat! When Ryan's little sister came along he loved to make her cry.
And she did. Everyday, most of the day. One particular day, Jordan had been in a
wonderful mood...she hadn't gotten hurt, wasn't crabby, things were just going
her way. Ryan decided that should change, so he pushed her off the couch.
"There, now she's crying!" he happily said. He also picked on his Granny Cleo,
doing such things as scribbling on her couch cushions with a permanent marker,
breaking her record albums, locking her out of the house, throwing her shoes up
on the roof of the house...you name it, he did it. In his defense, she never
would scold him, and said, "that's alright...you leave him alone!"
Ryan also was afflicted with a bit of a speech problem as a toddler. The letter
"s" was hard for him to pronounce,and would substitute the letter "f". For
example "Simba" would sound like "Fimba". A bit confusing for strangers, but we
could usually interpret his meaning.
Unfortunately, alot of people heard him at the doctor's office after an
appointment. He knew that the nurse would give him a sucker after his shot, so
as we were walking out of the exam room he began to holler, "I want a sucker, I
want a sucker" except that the "s" in sucker was switched to an "f" and that got
him alot of attention!
As I said earlier, Ryan was quite shy, so when he started preschool we were
faced with the inevitable shower of tears each time I had to leave him. One day,
after clipping my toenails, I jokingly asked Ryan if he wanted to keep
one...amazingly, he did! He tucked it into his shirt pocket and kept it there to
remind him of me when I left...The crying continued into kindergarten and I had
to hear reports from the teacher on how Ryan would start to worry about 3:00
everyday. Evidently he was fearful that the bus would leave without him and he
wouldn't get home. His crying would trigger the same reaction in several others
and the poor teacher had to console half the class.
I have more anecdotes that I could relate, but time has caused me to cut this
short. Perhaps I will continue with his middle school years in a future column.
If you would like to hear more on his childhood, be sure to make your voices
heard!
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