At least once a week, around 4:45, I feel like a tired old engine.
I know I need to make dinner for my family, but I think I can’t, I think I can’t, I think I can’t.
Last week it happened on Monday. So I ordered Mexican food (back where I come from, it’s just called “food”), and Graeme went to pick it up with Forest.
Forest is four years old and makes observations about everyone and everything, in the painfully honest fashion of a little boy. Such as “Be careful when you go down the stairs, Grandpa Jim. You are very old and you could break.” Or “Hey, Daddy! Look at that black guy!” (White guy in a black shirt)
And then there was that time we went to the blueberry farm and he had to have a quiet lesson on politeness and how it’s not a Nice Thing to comment on people’s legs, however large they might be.
All these comments are made very loudly, of course. Forest, like battery-operated baby toys, only has two settings: Loud, and FREAKING LOUD.
It’s understandable that Graeme got a little nervous as he stood in line at the restaurant with Forest.
If you’ve watched The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, you might remember the part about how fate ties a hundred little things together, from the lives of a hundred different people, and all those things lead to Cate Blanchett being hit by a car. Or something like that. Personally, I think it had much more to do with her dancing in the street, but anyway…
As fate and a hundred little things would have it, Graeme and Forest arrived at the restaurant at the same time as a man and two women were leaving. This is already a bit odd, but it gets better.
One of the ladies, very proud of her two recent, very large purchases, was wearing a very low-cut top. Forest turned his head to stare as they walked past.
The woman standing in line behind Graeme waited until the man, the two ladies, and all their belongings were in their car before turning to her husband and saying, “WOW! Those were huge!”
Graeme has begun hyperventilating a little. He’s thinking, oh no, here it comes. Forest uses the word “tremendous” often and now would be the right, wrong time to say it.
Right on cue, Forest in his FREAKING LOUD setting turns to Graeme and says:
“WOW! Daddy!! Did you see that?!”
Graeme is silent. Maybe if he doesn’t respond, Forest will forget about the whole thing. Things.
“Daddy?”
Sweating a little, “Yes, Forest?”
“THAT MAN WAS REALLY TALL!”
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