In an attempt to advance my status among the parental blogger guild, I agreed to babysit last evening as Alex enjoyed Memoirs of a Geisha in the nation’s only micropolis built upon the ruins of a burnt out chicken farm. She thought I was being nice, but spending time with the offspring is blogGOLD. I started by feeding the girl pizza and Nyquil and propping her head up on the couch so that she could watch Daddee and Bubba decapitate the alien forces of HALO 2 while subsequently shouting ‘TAKE ME TO YOUR LEADER!!!’ Tristan ate pizza and sipped from my glass, crying out in pain.
(‘Are you on another funny diet, Dad?’
‘Yes.’
‘What did you have for breakfast?’
‘An orange.’
‘What did you eat for lunch?’
‘An orange.’
‘What are you eating for dinner.’
‘A Vodka.’
‘What’s the name of that crazy diet?’
‘I call it The Screwdriver.’)
And to those of you who say, ‘you shouldn’t let your children watch violent video games, because it will inure and desensitize,’ I say to you, ‘Amen.’
I KNOW it’s wrong and bad parenting. I cannot tell you how many times I have arrived just in time to save the dog from becoming the next suicide bomber, aerosol cans and nails duct-taped around what are now hairless patches along the flank and underbelly; or how many times I’ve had to untie and hose off the neighbors, done wandered too close to our fence line; or the time I had to hit Tristan full grown man swing in the knee with a shovel cause he was in the RAGE, and I don’t know what else he got INTO. And sometimes I arrive much too late, and can tell Naya has been up to no good by the presence of pigeon feet and feathers strewn across her Elmo comforter. She’s really sweet when she has a cold, though, so you might notice we leave the heat off, the windows open and allow her to play barefoot outside in the puddles. We tried this with Tristan, but it came back to backfire on us, cause with all the stronger you get from not being killed by it, he’s virtually super-human, at least he was until he passed beyond human and into whatever it is he’s become now. He’s very sweet when he wants something. We try to keep him wanting by not giving in, but he’s just too strong, now, and he grows cranky with all the satisfaction.
* * *
Last Saturday, Alex called me on the cell; she and the boy were in Yelm at the video store.
‘I theenk I veel rent movie for boy.’
‘Oh, yeah? What are you going to get?’
‘I am lookeeng at movie about dog called Old Yeller.’
‘HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!’
‘Vut? Eez dees not good movie?’
‘It’s a riot.’
After the scene where Travis shoots into the pen where Yeller is tied up, I shout, ‘TAKE ME TO YOUR LEADER,’ and for some reason Alex gives me the dirtiest look, but I was only trying to lighten the mood, and it must have worked, cause Tristan’s facial expression didn’t change at all (and while I was being glib, I will admit my face was that painful contortion that is commonly translated as the IWILLNOTCRYIWILLNOTCRY look).
But apparently what happened is that Tristan didn’t realize Yeller had been done in, cause in the next scene, he looks up at me and says, ‘Where’s Old Yeller?’, to which I say, ‘Well didn’t you see? Travis killed him.’
And then Tristan turns slowly back to the TV set, and his chest starts heaving up and down, and it’s just about all I can stand, made worse by the fact that he’s not making any sound, just heaving his chest trying to understand and keep it all in at once, and it doesn’t help that Alex is in a mess of tears (and she NEVER cries), and I’m drunk and probably crying, too, and Naya is running around screaming and laughing at God knows what, the little monster. And I put my hand on the boy’s shoulder, and I say, ‘It’s a good movie, isn’t it?’ to which he YELLS: ‘IT’S THE STUPIDEST MOVIE IN THE WORLD!’
I think this weekend we’re watching Where the Red Fern Grows.
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