Last week, as we prepared for Don’s Pickering Family Reunion, our daughter and grandson, came on three different days to help prepare for the event.

Juliana also spent some time in the field and the shop helping with farming needs. After a busy morning pulling weeds in the garden and flower beds, we thought for sure Dorne would be ready for a nap. He had been picking up the weeds we’d pulled and putting them in the wheelbarrow to take to the chicken pen.

After reading five books and putting him down for some quiet time our three-year-old decided he’d rested enough and was back in the kitchen looking for “something to do.” The day before I’d showed him a drawer full of coloring books, markers, pens and pencils and of course, crayons.

So, I suggested getting out the coloring book and he happily accepted. He picked a Sesame Street book that someone had given the girls at the end of their coloring years that had never been used. He pulled his chair with the booster seat up to the kitchen table, plunked down the book and box of crayons and scrambled up to start his coloring.

Since he is starting to learn his letters, he would call out as he switched a page, “Grandma, what color is this crayon?”

I’d go over to check and read off the color on the crayon and then he’d color it with the correct color and then all the other items on the page. When one page had a brown color and none could be found in the box, I had to search for another box of crayons, which thankfully had a big brown color. This child is most precise.

As he flipped one set of pages there was a picture of Oscar the Grouch, but no crayon with writing to guide the color scheme. “Grandma, what color is Oscar the Grouch?” So, Grandma went to the internet. Up popped a page with a photo of Oscar the Grouch – all orange! By that time, I’d overcome the momentary brain fog and was pretty sure Oscar was green. Apparently, Dorne had thought so, too, as he asked when he saw the photo, “Oscar is orange?”

I quickly read the cutline out loud, and we learned that in the first two seasons of Sesame Street Oscar had actually been orange.

After listening intently Dorne quickly exchanged his orange crayon for a green one and went back to his project.

About that time, I was thinking I would take him for a tractor ride with his Mama. She was busy drilling an interseeded cover crop into some corn for one of our on-farm research projects. We had just negotiated the time to bring him to the field when it started sprinkling on the yard. In minutes it was pouring rain.

The unexpected thundershower caught both Grandpa and Mama off guard and Dorne’s coloring was interrupted. When Grandpa and Mama came to the house, they had their day’s trivia lesson as our three-year-old proudly related that, “Grandpa, did you know Oscar the Grouch used to be orange?”