When Little Miss orders me to pick her up, I invariably manage to demonstrate my ineptitude for child-carrying.

“You look like you’re carrying her out of a burning house,” some will scold, but as a well-established gay man of a certain age, I missed my training in kid-lifting.

“Umm, Joebie,” says Little Miss, “you can put me down now…you carry weird.”

Of course, it helps that she’s never read Tom Sawyer.

©2017 Joe Belknap Wall