When absolutely everything is wonderful, is anything wonderful?
Some time last year at dinner, I asked the then-four-year old how school was that day. He said (like all kids say) "Fine". "Do anything cool today?" I asked. "Umm... not really". "Ok" I said, and started to change the subject to something else. Before I could get my next thought out there he says "A farmer lady came in and she brought a piglet. We got to pet it."
"What? Well, that sounds pretty cool. What did it feel like?" I asked, intrigued.
"Soft. You know... like a pig."
I said "Oh."
That is, on the outside, I said "Oh."
On the inside, I said "Uh... No. No, actually, I don't. I have no idea whatsoever what a pig feels like. See, there champ, you would be shocked to find out exactly how few piglet-carrying farmer ladies have ever visited me at the office. Unlike you, a typical week for me does not involve nearly as many magic shows as it does, say, blisteringly mind-numbing paperwork marathons. Furthermore, to the best of my knowledge, no one I work with has ever, EVER, had his father, the volunteer fireman, come in with his fire truck and let everyone have a go playing with the sirens and hosing down the parking lot!
"And let me tell you about the guy you insist could 'really do real magic I'm serious'. He can't. You know why? It's not real! Look, if this guy could actually create a real bunny from a drawing of one, he would probably not waste his time wowing a bunch of four-and-five-year olds on a slow Tuesday morning. He would probably spend most of his time laying waste to the countryside, enslaving the populous, and vaporizing those who dare question his power in a burst of crimson flame - I know I would. Cripes, even if his magical powers were only limited to rabbit-creation, apart from making him, like, the lamest Anti-Christ ever, the dude would still probably at least have his own talk show or something.
"Friday is not 'Ice Cream Day' at work. No one ever gave me a "Good Job" sticker for turning out the lights when I left the room. I did not learn a new song about an acorn today. Instead I spent six hours listening the loud talker three cubes down bellow through a mouth crammed full of triple-decker cheeseburger about having surgery to remove a growth from the bottom of his foot next week as part of his continuing battle with Type Twelve diabetes, but I suppose that's just as good, right?
"And while we're at it, let's talk about Santa and the Easter Bunny, I... "
Huh? Minnesota what? Oh. Ohohohoh... gotcha. The title of the post. Guess I got a little off track, there...
Last week we flew to Minneapolis. It was his first flight and he was totally amped. We gave him the window seat (of course) and he was vibrating with excitement as we rocketed down the runway and zoomed into the sky. The excitement turned to mild interest and then to mere acceptance. By the time we had cleared the cloud cover and leveled out, he started asking how long the flight was.
"Just another hour. Isn't this cool?" I asked. "Yeah. I thought we would, you know, zoom straight up and..." (at this point he made a bunch of violent swooping motions with his hands that would not be physically possible in an aircraft outside of the event horizon of a Class 5 tornado). "No," I explained, "passenger jet pilots aren't allowed to do barrel rolls or attempt loop-the-loops."
"It's the rules," I finished lamely.
"Oh," he said.
Backing up a bit, the wife had hurt her foot and it was very painful for her to be on. The walks through the airport concourses, were, for her, an ordeal, but at least the moving walkways helped. I'll get back to the foot in a bit.
He has been on loads of escalators before, but never a moving sidewalk. So he did exactly what you or I would do... if we were the only people in the whole wide world, that is. He jumped. He danced and spun around. He ran the wrong way as fast as he could for as long as he could, then, after the coast was clear in front he turned around and went full-on Barry Allen, laughing as he rocketed past the slow-poke suckers strolling next to the sidewalk.
The disembodied voice repeating "Caution: You are approaching the end of the moving walkway..." held absolutely no meaning to anything at all in his world. It was a teeth-sucking second-and-a-half after he left the sidewalk at well beyond his full running speed, but he stumbled gracefully to a halt, miraculously without a "Wide World of Sports Agony of Defeat" moment.
Luck. Luck, luck, luck.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment