I want to make clear up front that I don’t have a horse running in this race, so to speak, but I have to give my son the point from yesterday that an awful lot of duplication of effort goes into making public restrooms “separate but equal.”
My son’s getting old enough now that he’s starting to ask me the trickier questions about why certain things are the way they are, and I’m running out of nice ways to say “Sometimes people are just ridiculous.”
I can’t be the only person who has ever looked at their child and thought, “Why are you being so childish right now? Oh . . . right!”
Me: Okay, kiddo, it’s been one of those days, so I’m going to lie down for just a bit while this headache passes. Get me if you need me, of course, but try to keep in mind that I need to rest as best I can.
L: Okay!
(A few minutes later.)
L: *opening door* Dad?
Me: *opening eyes* Yes?
L: Isa went poo on the pad, but I cleaned it up for you so you didn’t have to.
Me: Thank you! But why are you waking me up to tell me this now?
L: I can’t find her treats for being a good girl.
Me: They’re in the office.
L: Okay! *shuts door*
(Less than a minute later.)
L: *opening door* Where in the office?
Me: *eyes already open because I’d been waiting for this* Left of the trampoline.
L: Okay! *shuts door*
(A few minutes later. Just enough time to lull me into a false sense of security.)
L: *opening door* Dad?
Me: *opening eyes* Yes?
L: Isa had more poo, but this time it made me sick and I threw up in the bathroom.
Me: *getting out of bed* Well . . . your heart was in the right place; too bad your stomach wasn’t.
“Today you are H.E.L.L.O.” my son informed me this morning.
“Hello?” I asked.
“No, H.E.L.L.O.!” he corrected me by spelling it out for me again.
“Either way, makes sense to me,” I said with a shrug. “I feel like ‘hello’ this morning.”
You shouldn’t ask a yes-no question and then make ‘yes’ not an option!
– L, Age 7 (but only for a couple more days) – in response to The Little Red Hen story
Today my son had a substitute teacher in his virtual class, and early on she had struggled with pronouncing his name to his kid satisfaction, so the second time she called on him she laughingly told him she was just going to call him “Mister Alan”.
Without missing a beat, my son grinned and retorted, “That’s just ‘Mister’ to you!”
Fortunately, his teacher thought it was funny, and when I (instantly) confronted him over it, his reasoning was, essentially, “She set me up for it. I pretty much had to!”
While getting ready for class this morning, my son told me that he hoped that we “didn’t get into a tighter situation than a pair of designer jeans on a well-fed elephant.” Then he gave due credit to where he’d heard the phrase when I asked him.
On those rare occasions when I write about Algiz the Sun Conure, he has his own category: Coos and Caws. When I mentioned him the other day, I also mentioned our dog, Isa, thus prompting my son to ask why she doesn’t have her own category as well.
I didn’t have a good answer for that, so Isa now has her own category: Wags and Growls.
(I looked into trying to continue the C and C alliteration theme, but couldn’t come up with something that wouldn’t have been painfully pretentious.)
