My son and I have great conversations.
They're alarmingly one-sided these days considering that the best of Dex's responses are either monosyllabic or consist of a long string of unintelligible words devoid of any vowels.
Still, I persist in holding up my end, the intent being that his verbal ripostes will eventually be both lucid and topical.
Case in point. This past evening my wife left us men-folk to fend for ourselves just after I arrived home from work. She had an aesthetic appointment. It's important for chicks to do aesthetic stuff. It's probably even more important for my wife to do so, to compensate for me, since my notion of aesthetics consists of climbing into the shower with a set of hair clippers once a week to even out the stubble.
On my head.
Dinner is then, invariably, a harried affair. It's somewhere between five thirty and a quarter of six when I arrive home; my son likes to eat at six pee em. Otherwise he's climbing into the cupboard where he knows he can get to his crackers, or he's forming a triumvirate of stairs from the drawers that lead to the counter where his bag of croutons rests inside the bread box. (The fact that my son is placated for over an hour at a time by a cup full of stale cubes of garlicky bread amuses me no end.)
So it was eggs this evening. A little milk, a little ham, five minutes in the non-stick pan and the petulant king has been served his hassenphepher.
We keep a large tub of Huggies wipes in a kitchen drawer for the express purpose of mopping meal remnants off the boy three times a day. I swear I'm gonna keep that tub replenished long after both our kids outgrow the need for it. A glut of disposable, premoistened wash cloths ready to hand for any minor kitchen catastrophe. Very convenient.
Dex has gotten into the habit of grinning and turning his head to one side, repeatedly uttering his favourite mantra, "No!", as soon as he sees my hand rise out of the drawer with a wipe. He never tries to fend it off, but seems to derive great pleasure in re-enacting the same scene at every meal. We have very many rituals of that sort and I enjoy them fully as much as he does.
He raised a hand this time. Didn't want me mopping egg off his face. It's at these junctures that I start in with the conversations. Distract him a bit as I'm prying his hand off my wrist and darting in for the cleansing swipe. Some inane aphorism normally comes to mind, tangentially topical, and I try to build on it.
"C'mon Dex, gotta clean your face before you can have your milk. You know what they say, 'Cleanliness is next to godliness.'"
(As an aside, I cannot stomach parents who yammer back at their toddlers with an incoherent stream of babble or, worse yet by far, reinforce early bad habits by reiterating the mispronounced words of their progeny just because it's 'so darned cute'. Drives me bat-shit crazy.)
So, since Declan's reply was nothing more than a furrowed brow and a tongue trying to stave off what his ensnared hands could not, it was up to me to sustain the mollifying tone of voice. This is normally an introspective analysis of whatever I just said to cajole him into granting me access to his soiled mug. Because, well, I'm like that. I'm not overly fond of inane blather, so if I say something trite I have to end on a stronger note.
"But you know what, son? I'm a much stronger proponent of hygiene for hygiene's sake."
I paused as I contemplated this, mid-wipe. Then carried the thought through to its natural, for me, conclusion.
"Rather than hygiene for Christ's sake."
And then I laughed out loud at my unintended wit.
And then Dex started to laugh, though he knew not why. But whatever it was, it sure was funny! So Dad started to laugh even harder.
After he finished his milk, we shared a bowl of ice cream (Death by Chocolate) since he laughed at Daddy's joke.
What a good son.
You haven't, by chance, seen Bill Cosby's routine "Himself", have you?
In it he shares that for the first few years of his life, because of their father, his brother thought his name was 'Dammit' and he himself thought that his own name was 'Jesus Christ'. He then goes on to tell an anecdote about how his father saw him playing out in a puddle in the rain and opened the door to yell "Dammit! Come in out of the rain! You'll catch your death of cold!".
To which Young Bill replied: "But Daaad, I'm Jesus Christ!"
Yes, I own the DVD. Yes, I always make sure to use the lavatory before I watch it.
Posted by: smarty | Thursday, 02 February 2006 at 07:06 AM
smarty, Cosby's "Himself" is indeed hilarious.
Simon, I know EXACTLY what you mean about parents who repeat back "cute" mispronunciations. We thought it was cuter than the bee's knees (what does that mean?) when Ben said "spacebat" instead of "placemat," and we were a little sad when he stopped saying it, but we always said it correctly. Now, if we can just iron out that pesky details like "help" coming out "hayulp" and "there" pronounced "dayuh." It makes him sound like he has a strong southern accent, but he really doesn't. So far, "meeyulk" is the only word I can get him to repeat back correctly.
Oh, and thanks for the hassenphepher reference. I found hasenpfeffer on m-w.com, and now I know what it is. That word in the "Laverne and Shirley" opening had driven me nuts since I was a wee lad.
Posted by: Mark | Thursday, 02 February 2006 at 11:58 AM
These are my favorite kinds of posts, I smile the whole way through. You are so "in touch" Simon. Thanks for letting us share a small part of Dex's day with Daddy.
Posted by: Linda | Thursday, 02 February 2006 at 03:24 PM