My Turn: 'Motor Mouth' nickname faded away

I asked my daughter Laura the other day, “Doesn’t your balloon ever land?,” and she gave me a questionable look.

She wasn’t familiar with this saying from my childhood.

Mom would always say, “Doesn’t your balloon ever land?” because I was always yakking. In fact, my nickname at school was “Motor Mouth.”

I was called Motor Mouth because my cousin Mark and I, along with a neighbor, Ricky, were always telling jokes and giggling in class, doing everything but learning readin’, ’riting and ’rithmatic. And so they started calling me Motor Mouth.

I only held on to this prized title, however, for a short time.

I had Mark and Ricky with Mrs. Thomas in first grade, I believe, and then again with Mrs. Valdez in second grade at W.E. Lindsey Elementary. By the end of that year, though, the teacher must have thought, “Enough is enough!”

The following year, I was in Mrs. Lee’s classroom while Mark was across the hall in Mr. Sena’s classroom. He’s known nowadays as Father Sena.

Anyway, that was the end of the Three Musketeers, and the end of my Motor Mouth days. All of a sudden, I was shy.

As for Laura, though, she hasn’t inherited my shyness. Her balloon still hasn’t landed.