My mom emailed me today to recap the “day” she had had with
my father. It consisted of hours
of repetitively convincing him to shower and the details of his midnight snack
time adventures. At the conclusion
of her email she lamented over how long it had been since she’d seen her
grandchildren and how badly she longed for some proper dinnertime
conversation with them as a break from the mundane with my dad.
It just so happened that we had had a rather INTERESTING day
of conversations ourselves. Dinnertime
with Mia broke the cardinal rule of “no bathroom talk” at the dinner
table. For the past week Mia has
perseverated on her friend Sam at daycare. It all started last week when Sam pooped in his pants. Mia’s fascination with this
incident is wrought with fascination and admiration. The story was told OVER and OVER again and we couldn’t
MENTION going to daycare without being reminded, “Lets hope Sam doesn’t POOP in
his PANTS again!!!” I continued to
reassure her that Sam was most likely NOT going to poop in his pants again.
So tonight, when I casually asked how daycare was, Mia
gladly updated us on Sam. No, he
did NOT poop his pants today but he HAD peed ALL OVER the FLOOR.
I’m not sure who this character is; I can’t tell if it’s a
boy or a girl and I’m not even sure that s/he DID ever poop his pants or pee
ALL OVER the FLOOR but I HAVE made a mental note not to invite Sam to any play
dates anytime soon…
Toby wasn’t any sharper as a conversationalist today, I’m
afraid. We were driving home
tonight along a deserted country road with no car ahead of us and no car behind
us when out of the blue Toby announced that he’d “like to go there with this guy.”
?!?!?!?!
Um…
I glanced frantically around the car to see if I’d
accidentally picked up some other kid from school or mistakenly let some
strange man into our car. But as
you can guess all there was in the back seat was Toby, staring back eerily at
me after his mysteriously misplaced sentence.
“What on EARTH are you talking about Toby?” I asked while
frantically searching in my med school brain for the age of onset of
schizophrenia.
“That guy…” Toby said to me as if I was an idiot, “You know…the
one who’s singing right now. He
keeps saying he’ll take me there to that special place. And I have a special place I’d like to
go to.”
AHA! The radio! I keep forgetting that 5 year olds
sometimes unexpectedly stop talking and listen to things like music and
lyrics. I listened to whatever
song was playing and Toby was right – the guy DID keep promising, “I’ll take
you there” over and over again before qualifying the fact that it would be “to that
special place.”
I SUSPECT the singer meant it in a SEXUAL way and crossed my
fingers before asking Toby with as much casualty as I could muster WHERE
exactly this special place was that he wanted this (CREEPY) man to take him?
“Well, DUH” Toby said as if the answer was OBVIOUS…”The
bowling alley!”
And so I reassured my mother that she might not have found the
stimulating conversation she was looking for tonight at the Henry Household…but
hey, sometimes switching up the craziness is all you need!!
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