There is a certain amount of envy that I have for three year olds; their imaginations are incredible and their lives are completely carefree. What a glorious time!
I try not to be too overbearing and the entire "don't sweat the small stuff" adage was probably created with children in mind.
A good example is this morning when E located the scissors is a drawer and secretly took them downstairs. This happened in plain view of me in the kitchen, but I was too busy reading the latest shitty issue of Rolling Stone and eating Raisin Bran Crunch to notice him slyly concealing the scissors in his ride hand as he made his way towards the living room.
A verbal clue was provided.
"Hey! I can see my underwear now!"
I ignored this, choosing instead to read about the influences of John Frusciante.
After I completed learning about shit I really didn't need to know (He digs Hendrix, Pat Smear, Greg Ginn, etc., and ripped off a part in "Under The Bridge" from T-Rex), I glanced at E to see him giving me a shit eating grin.
"What are you doing?" I asked.
Without a word, he made some snipping noises with the scissors, later divulging that he "accidentally" cut his pajamas.
"You shouldn't do that! That's not a very good boy, is it?"
"I'm sorry, Daddy. It was an accident," he replied.
"No, it wasn't an accident. You knew that you shouldn't cut your pajamas with scissors!"
"Well, I didn't mean to," he offered.
"E, maybe you didn't mean to, but you know you're not supposed to play with scissors because they can hurt you and you can do things like cut your pajamas with them. Was that a very smart thing to do?"
"No, Daddy. I'm sorry."
And with that, the event was over. He's got other pajamas. He's got all his fingers. And now he doesn't know where I've hidden the scissors. Everything's cool.
Here's a recent photo of the cutter, sportin' the Wilco hat his Mommy got him on the tour for A Ghost Is Born:
And here's his top ten list of non-children related songs that he knows or requests. He's still got a thing for those God-awful Wiggles, Doodlebops, and other television-inspired shit (he's 3, for Christsakes) but whenever he blurts out a line from one of the following, it makes his Daddy proud:
1.) THE RAMONES-"Blitzkrieg Bop"
Known as the "Hey! Ho! Lets go!" song. He smiles and sings whenever they play it a baseball or hockey games.
Referred to as the "Ow" song
3.) ANDY GIBB-"Shadow Dancing"
My fault on this one. I sometimes make him dance and sing "Shadow Dancing" while I'm moving his arms. He was amazed once when this song came on during "I Love The 70's" on VH1 to the point where he lit up and exclaimed "Hey! That's 'Shadow Dancing.' Now that he knows the song is for real and not just a torture device (although some opinions may still vary), he'll break out the Andy Gibb classic if you ask him nicely.
Since I've played him this, it's being used in a television commercial. He reminds me every time it comes on: "Hey! You've got this song, Daddy!" We play it when we want to get funked up.
5.) THE BEATLES-"I Want To Hold Your Hand"I will not let this child go through life without knowing and appreciating who The Beatles were. To do less than this is sacrilegious. Meet The Beatles was part of my toddler years, and Goddamnit, it will be part of E's too.
6.) THE CRAMPS-"Tear It Up""E won a prize at Chuck E. Cheese the last time we visited: a plastic cordless toy microphone. He likes to stand on the hearth of our fireplace and give concerts with it. The show often develops to the point where he places the top of the microphone into his mouth and starts making guttural noises. When I commented that he looked like Lux Interior when he did this, I was obligated to show him video footage of The Cramps live in concert. He was very observant that Mr. Interior stole his vocal styling and that Mr. Interior's pants were falling off. He also noticed that Lux was shirtless, prompting E to incorporate this into his own stage act."
7.) THE RAMONES-"Commando"Because the second rule is "Be nice to Mommy."
8.) THE BRIAN JONESTOWN MASSACRE-"Who?"
Known as "The Hoot Owl" song. He knows part of the lyrics to this one. That is, the lyrics that are the word "Who" repeated over and over.
It has a baby at the beginning of the album version. He likes that. Plus, we go and gangbang Mommy with kisses when we play it. Admittedly, it pisses me off when he tries to slip her the tongue...but like Father like Son I guess.
10.) LOU REED-"Walk On The Wild Side"Known as the "do do do" song. This selection is curious because he thinks Lou looks like a monster on the cover of Transformer and he usually isn't too hip on monsters.
As mentioned in the Lou Reed song, E has an absolute dislike for monsters and subsequently hates the band Kiss which is fine with me. He has demanded that I turn off the Kiss "Live In Houston" performance from '77 whenever it's on, explaining "I don't like those guys." as his reasoning. He also dislikes any performer, male or female, with too much make-up. He'll offer "Boys don't wear make-up" as the reason for his discontent with eyeliner-wearing male performers and remain fastidiously silent on why women with lots of makeup bug him. His Mother only wears make-up for work and rarely around the house, so maybe that has something to do with it.
He also doesn't like artists with "things" in their hair. Cornrows, colors, dreadlocks and items like bandannas or any cloth that are around the person's hair typically bother him to the point where he immediately develops an impression about them.
It goes without saying that old pictures of yours truly with long hair back in the salad days confuses him, but he generally just blows it off as me "being silly."
Like I said, we try not to sweat the small stuff around here.
And for those of you who haven't seen footage of The Cramps before, here's a great segment from the movie/soundtrack Urgh! A Music War.
2 comments:
them guys n galls should've been huge.
I hope you've introduced the youngin' to the movie Yellow Submarine. If you haven't, get the DVD. If he's anything like Simon at that age, it will become one of his favorites.
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