"I don't know. But the important thing is that you don't use them. You're too little and too sweet for such yucky stuff to come out of your mouth." "But I'm not too little for yucky burps to come out. Or throw-up."
"Yeah, that is yucky. But those are very different than bad words. You can't help that." "Sometimes I can't help it when I say naughty things. Just like burps and throw-up, Mom."
He can rationalize with the best of them.
"And I think that-- wait, no Graham! Don't take my dinosaur! BURP YOU, Graham."
I'm getting a little tired of Facebook. Don't get me wrong-- I still check it compulsively, lest I miss out on the news that a former high school classmate that I haven't seen since 1997 get an unattractive pedicure at a nail joint in Missouri, or that 74 of my "friends" really, REALLY want me to play Farmville. It just seems as though, lately, my News Feed has been a little dry.
Because of that, I often seek out the news and video clips that my friends share, anticipating the excitement of watching a guy fall off a ladder, or a malfunctioning washing machine doing the Harlem Shake.
You know, the important things in life.
So when I saw the following clip that a friend had shared, I couldn't help but watch and pass it along myself.
For those of you that can't view the video, it is a clip sharing the story of a 5 year-old girl named Savannah who called 911 after her father collapsed with chest pains. Not only was this girl calm and collected, answering the dispatchers questions with confidence and even pausing to encourage her Dad that help was on the way, but she did all of it with a sassy silliness that officially made this girl The Cutest Thing Ever.
After I'd watched the video and shared it on Facebook, I got thinking about how smart this man was to teach his daughter what to do in the event of an emergency. I've considered having a similar discussion with Cael, who is definitely smart and tech-savvy enough to make a simple phone call, but the honest truth is that I think my boys would more likely take my collapse as an opportunity to beat me with their homemade swords than a sign that I need medical attention.
But just in case my potential demise took place when Cael was in a particularly charitable mood, I thought it wouldn't hurt to have a discussion about what to do in case Mommy was hurt.
"Hey Cael, I want to talk to you about something."
"--I didn't do it! I saw the old diapers and Graham said it would be funny but I know I'm a big boy and I don't need--"
"--Cael, you're not in trouble. I wanted to talk to you about something else. What would you do if I got really sick or hurt and I needed help?"
"Oh. I'd go get Daddy or Papa. Or Amy."
"How would you get to them? You know you can't drive."
"I don't know. If I couldn't get them, I guess I'd jump on you to wake you up. Or I'd use a bat or something."
Okay, it wasn't a sword, but I was pretty close.
"If I'm hurt, hitting me with something probably isn't a good idea. But here is what you should do; you should find my cell phone, which I usually have with me, and put in three numbers: 911."
"Oh, yeah, we talked about that at school."
"That's right. When you call that number, someone will answer the phone and ask you questions to find out what is wrong, and then they will send an ambulance."
"Okay, Mom."
"Now here's my phone. I want to see if you know how to make a phone call. You put in those numbers, but don't hit send, okay?"
"Okay."
I knew this part was risky, and the last thing I wanted was for my son to start a new obsession with dialing 911 to ask for hot dogs or dirty jokes, but I also didn't want my efforts to be wasted because he couldn't navigate my iPhone well enough to place an actual call.
"Cael, what are you doing?!?"
"Playing Temple Run."
"What are you supposed to be doing?"
"Calling an ambulance."
"If I'm really hurt, Cael, you need to follow directions quickly and not stop to play games."
"But you're not."
"I know, but this is important, and I want you to pay attention."
"Okay, Mom. See? 911. Now I'm going to call '863'. Or maybe '229'."
Obviously I will have to be pretty vigilant with my phone in the days to come, making sure he doesn't steal it and place unnecessary calls to information or overseas nations. But I did feel a sense of relief knowing that if something were to happen, I had my very own sassy child present to call for help.
I just wish that sense of relief had lasted longer.
"Wait, Cael. What were you saying you did with those old diapers...?"
I am writing today as a concerned
parent and citizen of our community, and I would greatly appreciate your
consideration of my thoughts.
In today's day and age, I
understand that it is increasingly important for families to spend
quality time together to combat the war on values that seems to be
raging in our schools and homes. Perhaps that was the major motivator
for this year's annual Spring Break, an entire week of no school that
allows for plenty of "quality" time with my five year-old son.
This
event may be steeped in tradition, but as a first time school parent, I
am just now beginning to comprehend the consequences of this lapse in
scholastic opportunities. Not only is my son missing out on the
continuing education that will hopefully prevent his future
incarceration, but he is taking out his superfluous energy and
frustration on my family and our home.
As he has missed out on
the creativity and learning present in his art class, my son has taken
to coloring the carpet and stamping the walls in protest.
With
no access to the library and its boundless reading material, I found my
child huddled in the corner with a "free panty" advertisement from
Victoria's Secret, clearly desperate for new words to master, like
"cleavage" and "supple".
And lastly, lacking the camaraderie of
his school friends, my eldest chose to roughhouse with his younger
brother, who is too young to handle his more aggressive style of play.
At least that's what I thought. The right hook and subsequent bloody nose he gave his older brother said otherwise.
So
in conclusion, school board members, please consider my thoughts as you
construct next year's academic calendar. While this vacation may be
beneficial for teachers, please keep weary parents and our community's
children in mind. They are the future, you know.
Several months ago I shared, with bizarre pride, the news that my sons
had taken up comedy as a new pastime, memorizing their favorite Jim
Gaffigan bit about buying toilet paper in bulk and repeating it ad
nauseam. Remember?
It was really cute at first. It was still
pretty cute at "second". But after three consecutive weeks of "does
that guy ever leave the bathroom?" following me around as I navigated
church, the post office and the grocery store, I was nearly ready to
trade in "comedic Cael" for the original, more troublesome model.
As
it turns out, he never did give up on striving to be funny. I guess
it's in his blood, because Joel has always been a class clown,
life-of-the-party type. And while I'm not usually one to toot my own
horn, I picked up on humor quickly in junior high and always worked hard
to keep my friends laughing.
You do what you have to do when you look like this.
Mercifully,
Cael's sense of humor wasn't borne from frizzy hair or six
years of braces, but simply from an innate desire for attention. So
thus far in his life, he has been spared the torture of being laughed at
in favor of laughing along.
In the last few days, however, Cael
has grown more confident in his idea of "funny", and has begun creating
his own material. As his main audience, and someone who enjoys comedy, I
first found his Seinfeld-esque observational humor to be somewhat
funny. He understood that by drawing parallels between otherwise
unrelated things, he'd found his comedic niche and exploited that fact
each time he opened his mouth.
"Mom, carrots are weird. And guess what? What do you call a carrot that's blue?"
"I don't know. What?"
"A basket!"
Ba dum, chh...
I
wasn't sure if he was attempting to tell jokes or alerting me to a
possible medical problem that had gone thus far undiagnosed. But as the
next few moments and the next few bizarre jokes unfolded, his new
calling was clear.
"What is an book that stinks?"
"What?"
"A chicken! And here's another one, Mommy!"
Great. He's anything if not persistent, and my acting skills weren't good enough to feign amusement all day.
"What's a blue sofa with hair on it?"
"What is it?"
"A punk!"
That almost worked. Maybe there was still hope.
"Okay, Cael. Last one."
"Okay. What do you call chips and salsa that's spicy?"
"You tell me, dude."
"Fire in your mouth. Or fire in your underpants!!!"
I've always felt that I have a bit of an addictive personality. When I
feel stress or pressure, I am quick to duck tail and cover, searching
out whatever interests me as a distraction and absorbing as much of it
as possible. Sometimes that might be an activity or a friend or even a
blasted television show, but I can list at almost any time which
addiction will propel me through tough times.
Cael takes after me
in this regard. Not the overwhelming-susceptibility-to-stress part,
but the obsessive part; his interests always being very one-dimensional
and clear as day. First it was trains. Briefly it was tractors. Then
it was dinosaurs, and even today superheroes captivate his attention
like nothing else.
Graham is a completely different animal. A weasel, perhaps.
Graham
is eclectic in every sense of the word. His taste in food or
television spans multiple genres, and his collection of favorite toys
reveals nothing about his personality or preferences. But if there is
one constant in my youngest son's life, it is his love of screwing
around with water.
When Graham was very little, he loved
to take baths in the bathroom or kitchen sink, and he would splash and wriggle in the
water until the floor was as wet as the inside of the basin. When he
grew a bit older, he discovered the magical properties of wet toilet
paper and conducted daily experiments to discover how much tissue our
home's plumbing could tolerate. Just earlier this year, our foray into
potty training, while successful in releasing us from the iron grip of
diapers, reinvigorated Graham's interest in the wonder of the bathroom.
And
that is why I find myself this morning, on my water-soaked knees,
retrieving bits of water-logged construction paper light-sabers from the
junction of the carpet and the vinyl flooring. And while I could use the fantasy of his future marine biologist earnings as a stress-reliever, I think I'll stick to caffeine and a good book.
Sometimes literacy isn't all it's cracked up to be.
"If you want me to read another book, go grab one, Graham."
"We read them all."
"No, we have a ton of books; we didn't read all of them today."
"I don't want those books. I know all of those books."
"Okay, well I'll make up a story, then. I'll tell it to you, and then you can make up a story for me."
"Okay, Mommy."
I
briefly considered telling him a story about how Mommy is a painfully
dedicated perfectionist, but I figured that Cael's valentine and the
story I was about to share would convey that pretty clearly.
"Once
upon a time, there was a fluffy puppy named Oscar. Oscar was the
leader of all of the dogs in Dogland because everyone loved him the
most. He was kind to everyone he met, and he never bit or hurt anyone.
One day, all of the dogs in Dogland decided that they wanted to steal
all of the treats from the pet store. They all squeezed into the dog
house and came up with a brilliant plan. They would send in Oscar,
everyone's favorite white dog, to grab up all of the treats and run out
of the store without paying. They picked Oscar because he was so nice
and the other dogs knew that no one would suspect Oscar of doing
something so naughty.
When Oscar learned about the plan, he
jumped up and down because he was so excited about dog treats. But then
he thought more and more about taking the treats from the store without
paying, and he knew it was wrong. He whined and whimpered like he
needed to go potty until the other dogs asked him what was wrong. 'We
can't steal the treats. It's wrong, and we are better dogs than that.
We need to pay for the treats.'
The other dogs didn't agree.
So they banded together and picked a new leader to go steal the treats
from the pet store. Oscar stayed in his dog house, worried about his
friends, but knowing that he was doing the right thing. Meanwhile, the
other dogs sneaked into the pet store. They crept around the corners
and stayed very quiet. But quickly, the store owner saw a big golden
retriever with his cheeks stuffed full of beef-flavored dog treats and
blew a loud whistle.
'STOP RIGHT THERE!'
The store owner
called the pound, and a man with a long beard showed up to take the
naughty dogs away. Oscar barked at his owners to help and that same
afternoon, his friends were released from the pound.
'Oscar, we
are so sorry. You were right about stealing the treats, and we
shouldn't have done that. We have learned our lesson, and we want you
to be our leader again. Please forgive us?'
Oscar, always a kind
puppy, immediately forgave his friends. 'Of course I will forgive
you. But you need to promise me that you will always be nice to others
and do the right thing.'
'We will, we will!', the other dogs barked.
And that is how Oscar, the fluffy white puppy, became the world's greatest dog."
"Did you like that story?" "Yes, I liked it but I wanted a story about dinosaurs."
"Well why don't you make your story about dinosaurs?"
"Okay,
Mommy. One time there was a dinosaur named Mommy. And she was HUGE
and MEAN and had huge teeth and she ate animals and trucks and stuff.
And she smelled AWFUL and nobody liked her. The end."
"And I think that-- wait, no Graham! Don't take my dinosaur! BURP YOU, Graham."
