“Girls!  Do I need to call Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle?”

Yes, I actually said that this morning from the shower.

I don’t know about you, but I could use someone around my house who doesn’t get the least bit perturbed at the marker messes and confetti showers two little girls can create out of well-intentioned art projects, who keeps high heels for little girls to wear for dress up, and who leaves her her long “so the children can comb it” ( 10).   Most useful, however, would be Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle’s uncanny ability to cure the most aggravating and stubborn of childhood ailments: Answer-Backishness, Selfishness, and my own personal nemesis, Fighter-Quarrelitis.  Despite her rather unique and successful approach to discipline, the children love her.  Does anyone know her phone number or how much she might charge to whip my household into shape?

My girls and I just finished up this delightful story by Betty MacDonald over lunch today.  (Betty MacDonald also wrote the book The Egg and I which was adapted into a delightfully funny film which, if I remember correctly, was the debut of Ma and Pa Kettle.)  Lulu listened with twinkling eyes to a tale of yet another type of childish misbehavior.  Louise gleefully shouted “Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle!” when I paused for a response to just whom the hapless parents of the Fighter-Quarreler twins, Joan and Anne, could call.  I must admit that part of me  just hoped that my girls would not “catch” any of the “diseases” we read about, while the other part of me read this as a cautionary tale or morality story to teach them a lesson.   The methodologies and names in this story are rather out of date and non-PC, but it is a rollicking good story.

**Quotation is from the 1975 HarperCollins edition of the book.