Dead Thing
Have you ever been sitting somewhere in your house, somewhere you can’t simply move from at will, and noticed something creepily unrecognizable under the sink? It’s drenched in shadow and you can’t be sure what the heck it is: is it or was it once alive?Perhaps, you tell yourself, it’s just an oddly-shaped dustball. But no—it appears almost worm-shaped.
How did it get there? Is your child in danger? When you finish what’s necessary, you’re going to have to deal with it—are you up to the challenge? Is this Thing going to scare you out of your wits? Undermine the confidence in the cleanliness and pest-free state of your house? Your abilities as a mother?
Fortunately, you have a roll of paper towels within reach. (Although you’re aware they’re ecologically unsound, you haven’t been able to give them up just yet.) You tear one off and fold it, readying it for whatever’s waiting for you in the shadows. And when it’s time, you kneel on the rug to get a closer look and realize that it’s not about to strike out at you, that it never was a mobile organism, that it is merely a bit of dried-up foliage that undoubtedly stuck to someone’s shoe and got deposited there. So you scoop it up in the paper towel, toss it out, and forget about it entirely. Until, that is, the next time.
So… has this happened to you?
Me neither.
Something My Kid Has Said #438
“I’m not calling you stupid, Mommy. I’m calling the attitude stupid.”
Red from the Sun
A friend and I recently exchanged some silly young-kids’ jokes on Facebook and I thought I’d try some out on Jonah. Caveat: I am generally horrible at telling jokes. There seems to be about 100 kb of joke space available in my brain, and apparently it’s dominated by the one I’ve remembered for decades (about a mushroom going into a bar, being told to leave, and asking, “But why? I’m a fun guy!” Get it? Fungi.)
The thing is, too, that it can be hard to know just what your kid will “get.” Sometimes I assume he’ll understand a joke and he just, well, doesn’t. While he may be a rather perceptive little guy in other arenas and can be hysterically funny, when it comes to puns, for instance, he doesn’t always catch on. (Come to think of it, he’s only inhabited the Earth for five years and his understanding of language can’t be expected to be as multi-layered as an adult’s.)
He usually laughs even though he doesn’t really get it, then repeats his own variation with the word “butt” featured prominently in the punchline.
“I have a joke for you, Jonah,” I told him in the car. “I’m going to ask you a question and you answer ‘yes,’ okay?”
“Okay.”
“Are you red from the sun?”
“No.”
Some things simply can’t be explained: crop circles, Stonehenge, and why something strikes us as funny at a particular moment. I started to laugh, and I laughed so hard my eyes began to tear. Unfortunately, we were right at a tricky intersection at which I was attempting to turn left; it didn’t help that I’d sagely squirted my dirty windshield with cleaner fluid and was endeavoring to whisk it off with old, useless wipers. But mature adult that I am, I recovered myself, stuck my head out the window, ascertained that no traffic was approaching, and safely made my turn.
“You’re supposed to say ‘yes,’ Jonah, okay?”
“Okay, but first you have to answer my question ‘no.’”
“Sure.”
“Did your butt fall off?”
“Uh, no. So here’s my question, Jonah: Are you red from the sun?”
“Yes.”
“Nice to meet you. I’m Aviva from Earth.”
I truly am thankful we made it home safely. There probably should be regulations about how hysterically drivers are permitted to laugh. There certainly are some unstable people out there who’ll laugh at just about anything.