I'm back. The long hiatus was due to the birth of the second one, who through being the incarnation of Calvin (from Calvin and Hobbes) and Dennis the Menace in one body has kept me, the husband and Hannah busy snatching him out of miscellaneous well-intentioned catastrophes over the past few years. I used to think there was no way these comic characters could possibly be real boys, but after the first year of life when he discovered walking, I became personally and painfully acquainted with their brand of live-in-your-head I-meant-well loose-canon troubles. His life is a gamut of funny-haha antics like sticking a bead up his nose with me prying it out along with a grain of rice (beats me) and lots of goop to serious physically-threatening situations like getting lost for 20 minutes in the ocean (after frantic searching, we found him sitting serenely about a kilometre away waist-deep in water absorbed in playing with rubbish he picked up in the sea and he didn't even realise he was lost, and need I say, didn't realise he couldn't swim).
I know he means well, or at least, he doesn't mean bad. But this action-sequence narrative happening constantly in his head makes for many Sundays' worth of Calvin strips. Like the time we were at the playground and he was peacefully riding his little tricycle around when he paused in front of some girls on swings. He watched them for a few moments rushing through the air up and down as high as the trees. Then he manoeuvred his tricycle around to the side of the swings and waited. From the park bench we watched in puzzlement till comprehension dawned on the husband who said, "He thinks he's in a computer game". But before we could get off the bench and yell at him, he pumped his short legs on the tiny peddles and shot off through the frenetic criss-crossing swings. Or probably intended to shoot off, only being little less than three and riding a dinky trike, he wouldn't have been what you would think of as a speed-demon.
Sometimes during idle moments I wonder what he was truly thinking. Did he miscalculate their velocity? Did he think he could be launched like a rocket?
Anyhow, his body made contact with someone's feet and gained propulsion very quickly. And like some tacky B-grade movie, we watched in open-mouthed horror as he left his tricycle behind and connected a graceful arc with ground that normally did not associate itself with swings.
"What were you thinking" has become the over-used phrase through the years of picking him up and checking him for hurts. "What?", he will answer. "When you did such-and-such", we say exasperatedly and more often than not, he will have no idea of the mischief we are accusing him of. "I didn't do that," he would reply in a slightly hurt tone. Because, to him, he really wasn't doing that. He was in a fight with some baddies, or trying to save some little people from an impending train wreck. Jesus, he said, went up in a rocket and it exploded and that's what his teacher in Sunday School taught him. I'm guessing that's why one day after one of those moments the teacher tried to put it diplomatically to us he would do so much better if one of the family could stay with him when he had to be in Sunday School. You know how sometimes in the last square in the Calvin strips, Watterson treats you to a view of Calvin's parents' expressions? We had one of those after the Jesus exploding episode.
Other than stunts that turn out to be personally life-threatening though, he is a sweet kid who writes daily notes to us saying, "I heart Yoo" (okay, so phonics lessons aren't quite going smoothly), says his bedtime prayer by listing all the things he sets his eyes on that he's grateful for (that can take a while - "Thank you Lord, for my bed my toys my Jie Jie my mummy my daddy the sky the stars the air that we can breathe (takes a deep breath) so that we don't die ....), saves favourite sweets for his Jie Jie "because she likes them too" and really doesn't set about meaning to hurt anyone though his plans often backfire like Dennis.
I say this in defence of him because there have been occasions where he will walk past someone and have that person chuckle to me in an indulgent tone, "Norty boy", though he really didn't do anything that time, just because he has such an impish face. And once, during a play session, someone brought a Thinkfun Laser Maze game and he was very fascinated by the beam and thought it was cool the way his friend's pupils would contract when he shone the beam into the eyes, leading to his friend's mother who was a very dear friend of mine to tell me she would stop her son playing with him unless I allowed her to punish him. No ma'am, I'm sorry it happened and that I wasn't monitoring him as I should have been and that your son might have been hurt (though he wasn't at all actually) and that he didn't understand about lasers but I would not let you or anyone else execute revenge or justice on him.
By and large however, most people have been understanding and strangely enough he is remarkably popular (notorious?). His teachers are frazzled and sometimes people around him receive a surprise hurt, but they see that behind it all he's really quite benign. Am I being too indulgent as my ex-friend put it?
So, with this new start, let me introduce you to a new love of my life, the L.O. I thought about this quite a bit and you may disagree but I think he shall remain unnamed. Not because I'm ashamed of him. On the contrary I'm rather proud of him. Rather because the image of him will fit in your mental models as you are and not as he is and I want to spare him from having to bear the burden of other people's pre-determined mind-sets.
I know he means well, or at least, he doesn't mean bad. But this action-sequence narrative happening constantly in his head makes for many Sundays' worth of Calvin strips. Like the time we were at the playground and he was peacefully riding his little tricycle around when he paused in front of some girls on swings. He watched them for a few moments rushing through the air up and down as high as the trees. Then he manoeuvred his tricycle around to the side of the swings and waited. From the park bench we watched in puzzlement till comprehension dawned on the husband who said, "He thinks he's in a computer game". But before we could get off the bench and yell at him, he pumped his short legs on the tiny peddles and shot off through the frenetic criss-crossing swings. Or probably intended to shoot off, only being little less than three and riding a dinky trike, he wouldn't have been what you would think of as a speed-demon.
Sometimes during idle moments I wonder what he was truly thinking. Did he miscalculate their velocity? Did he think he could be launched like a rocket?
Anyhow, his body made contact with someone's feet and gained propulsion very quickly. And like some tacky B-grade movie, we watched in open-mouthed horror as he left his tricycle behind and connected a graceful arc with ground that normally did not associate itself with swings.
"What were you thinking" has become the over-used phrase through the years of picking him up and checking him for hurts. "What?", he will answer. "When you did such-and-such", we say exasperatedly and more often than not, he will have no idea of the mischief we are accusing him of. "I didn't do that," he would reply in a slightly hurt tone. Because, to him, he really wasn't doing that. He was in a fight with some baddies, or trying to save some little people from an impending train wreck. Jesus, he said, went up in a rocket and it exploded and that's what his teacher in Sunday School taught him. I'm guessing that's why one day after one of those moments the teacher tried to put it diplomatically to us he would do so much better if one of the family could stay with him when he had to be in Sunday School. You know how sometimes in the last square in the Calvin strips, Watterson treats you to a view of Calvin's parents' expressions? We had one of those after the Jesus exploding episode.
Other than stunts that turn out to be personally life-threatening though, he is a sweet kid who writes daily notes to us saying, "I heart Yoo" (okay, so phonics lessons aren't quite going smoothly), says his bedtime prayer by listing all the things he sets his eyes on that he's grateful for (that can take a while - "Thank you Lord, for my bed my toys my Jie Jie my mummy my daddy the sky the stars the air that we can breathe (takes a deep breath) so that we don't die ....), saves favourite sweets for his Jie Jie "because she likes them too" and really doesn't set about meaning to hurt anyone though his plans often backfire like Dennis.
I say this in defence of him because there have been occasions where he will walk past someone and have that person chuckle to me in an indulgent tone, "Norty boy", though he really didn't do anything that time, just because he has such an impish face. And once, during a play session, someone brought a Thinkfun Laser Maze game and he was very fascinated by the beam and thought it was cool the way his friend's pupils would contract when he shone the beam into the eyes, leading to his friend's mother who was a very dear friend of mine to tell me she would stop her son playing with him unless I allowed her to punish him. No ma'am, I'm sorry it happened and that I wasn't monitoring him as I should have been and that your son might have been hurt (though he wasn't at all actually) and that he didn't understand about lasers but I would not let you or anyone else execute revenge or justice on him.
By and large however, most people have been understanding and strangely enough he is remarkably popular (notorious?). His teachers are frazzled and sometimes people around him receive a surprise hurt, but they see that behind it all he's really quite benign. Am I being too indulgent as my ex-friend put it?
So, with this new start, let me introduce you to a new love of my life, the L.O. I thought about this quite a bit and you may disagree but I think he shall remain unnamed. Not because I'm ashamed of him. On the contrary I'm rather proud of him. Rather because the image of him will fit in your mental models as you are and not as he is and I want to spare him from having to bear the burden of other people's pre-determined mind-sets.
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