I is for Imp

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imp

-noun

1.	a little devil or demon; an evil spirit.

2.	a mischievous child.

There is a lot of folklore about imps. They take other forms too, such as gremlins, goblins and gnomes (what's with the "G"s?), and Pan and Puck, oh and Dobby the house elf.

I was told recently by my sister that my life path number (15) indicates the need to let loose and be more of an imp. If your older sister (eleven years older) tells you something like that, doesn't that impart a mandate? This was especially intriguing as it came just after I'd added that little girl to my sidebar. I thought, hmm, not only am I shrinking back to childhood, maybe this is a call back to a childhood I never lived, that of the mischievous child.

So, picture the image at the top, and those aren't sheep, but chickens.

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Don, suddenly looking up from his Hobby Farms magazine, over his reading glasses: "What the . . .?! How'd the chickens get out!!?"

Ruth: "Wha?"

Don, now at the window, confused: "Look! I didn't let them out!"

Ruth, turning to look through the window at the hens frolicking with Khan, then back to Henry James to re-read the same sentence for the fifteenth time: "Wow, that's weird."

Don: "Did you let them out?" he asks incredulously. Suddenly he reviews the mental calendar in his head wondering if it's April Fool's Day yet.

Ruth: "Moo heee?" (pulling a phrase her impish mother used to say for "Who me?")

Don, scratching his head: "Maybe I didn't latch the coop tight last night." And he throws on his jacket, steps into his farm clogs and lets the door bang behind him.

Ruth peeks out the window at him, trying to enjoy watching him make a beeline for the coop door. But she's afraid. What if one of the hens got gobbled by a hawk in the last 15 minutes since she snuck out and opened the latch? That would be a bad life path number 15.

Don returns. "I must be losing my mind. And I'll never get them back in until dusk. Oh well, hope they enjoy the day out."

Ruth: "So they're all accounted for?"

Don: "No, they're scavenging now, so I won't be able to count until they're back in the roost this evening."

Oh dear, Ruth will have to suffer as an imp all day Sunday. And oh no! Last night was daylight savings, prolonging the misery an extra hour!

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