After a dinner playdate with a friend who lives in Millis, Owen and I went to enjoy the lights at Millis Wonderland. It’s amazing, by the way. Owen must have heard my friend telling me about the wealthy family who lives in the house there, and all the buildings on the property, etc.
As we were driving through, admiring all of the elaborate displays of lights and scenes, Owen exclaimed, “I don’t think this guy is rich anymore!”
A few weeks ago, Owen and I were riding bikes down to the end of our short street. A car was coming, so we pulled over to the side. Owen said, “I wonder if that’s Molly’s dad.”
As the car went by, we could see it was some older, gray and balding guy in a collared, button-down shirt.
“Nope,” Owen said. “It’s just some business guy.”
“Oh yeah, what makes you say it was a business guy?”
“Because. He was wearing clothes like Pa and Grampa wear.”
As the mom of a socially awkward five-year-old boy, I’ve often wanted to be a fly on the wall when he’s talking to his friends. Yeah, I admit I want to see who starts the potty talk and which one says “lookit,” but I really want to hear how Owen interacts with his friends.
I got that chance today, or as close to it as I’ll probably get, when I picked up Owen and his friend, Colin, from school for a playdate. As the chauffeur in the front seat (and not possessing the proper Bionicle lingo to be taken seriously) I was virtually invisible, and every question I asked about how school was went unanswered. I gave up and eavesdropped. After Colin was satisfied with the reasons Owen took off his shoes the moment he entered the car, the conversation went something like this:
Colin: “Sometime Sawyer (2-year-old brother) takes off his shoes too.”
Owen: “Yeah, and his clothes a lot too.”
Colin: “And sometimes his diaper (the mystery of the potty talk is becoming clearer).”
Owen: “Ewwww! Did you see his underwear?”
So if you were a fly on the wall, you too might hear the sweet sounds of pure innocence, with a little dopey thrown in.
Not the day the space shuttle exploded.
Not the day Kennedy was assassinated.
Not the day the twin towers crumbled from the New York skyline.
More tragic — March 19, 2010 was the day my magic hat lost its magic. It was only a matter of time….
What could take its place? Perhaps a scarf with Hello Kitty patterns, worn around my head like a do-rag?
Owen may have super powers, but I’ve got a magic hat. Seriously, Frosty the Snowman‘s hat has nothing on my bewitching head gear. Not only does my magic hat solve problems a year-and-a-half old, but it repels even the cutest of five-year-old boys and answers questions previously thought unanswerable.
You may remember the earth-shattering question I posed not too long ago: Is Owen the next Gandhi, or am I just embarrassing? Well, I decided to try a little experiment this morning. Just before it was time to drive Owen to school, the “boy hat” (henceforth known as the “magic hat”) found its way to my head. I said nothing, Owen said nothing.
As we pulled up to the school, I asked Owen if he was going to walk in by himself today. His answer: “Yes, ’cause (he points at my head) of the hat. I will walk in myself every time you wear that hat.”
That can be arranged….
Who knew all I had to do was wear a baseball hat in order to benefit from the convenient valet service at Owen’s preschool? If someone had told me this a year-and-a-half ago, I would have gladly complied.
So now we know: Owen may not be the next Gandhi, but I am most definitely embarrassing. But I have a magic hat now, so who cares?
Owen and I were writing together the other day, sounding out the word “bugle.” Doesn’t every five-year-old want to write about bugles? I can put this into context for you if I tell you that The Daily Bugle is the newspaper where Peter Parker (otherwise known as Spider-Man) works as a photographer. It’s all starting to make sense now, isn’t it?
Since the little bugger’s mom just happens to be a reading teacher, Owen of course heard and recorded every sound in “bugle.” I added the “e” at the end, saying, “You heard every sound in the word ‘bugle.’ I’m just going to make a silent ‘e’ here. You can’t hear it, but this is the way the word ‘bugle’ looks.”
Owen was silent for a moment, then asked, “Why is that a silent ‘e’? It looks just like a regular ‘e.’”
And so begins the long journey of literacy, and trying to explain the crazy English language.
Owen’s known for a long time that God put him in my belly. What can I say? The kid asks questions and I cop out — isn’t that the way it’s done? I’m hardly having a sex talk with my then-three-year-old, and Owen’s such a science geek that he’d eat up that version of the conversation. So I stuck with God.
And God’s stuck with me, until last night, when, for a brief moment, I thought He’d forsaken me. During our endless trips up and down the stairs at bedtime, Keith came down to the kitchen and said it was my turn to go up, because Owen had a question for me. He was wondering how Luke and Leia got in Queen Amidala‘s tummy. Taking another trip down cop-out lane, I told Keith to go back up and tell him God put them there.
Keith snorted at me in disbelief, but went upstairs to do it anyway. He left me thinking, though, as I scrubbed the little brown bits off the Le Creuset, why Owen bothered to ask that question. Was he starting to doubt my answer? Was there more going on in his amazing kid brain than I gave him credit for? Was he watching The Discovery Channel, or maybe Animal Planet? Or maybe he’d just forgotten how babies get in tummies, and needed a reminder (which then had me worried that his brain was leaking).
Just then, Keith came downstairs, laughing. When Keith told Owen that God put Luke and Leia in Queen Amidala’s belly, this is how the rest of the conversation went:
“What? In Star Wars? In space?”
“Yeah, God is everywhere. He’s in space, even in galaxies far, far away.”
“But in Star Wars?”
“Yes, even in Star Wars.”
“But Star Wars is pretend!”
“… Right. So, it’s pretend God … in space.”
“Oh.”
So now Star Wars has a new, pretend God, that puts pretend babies in pretend characters’ bellies. And that satisfies Owen … for now.
Owen and I were running late this morning, so I didn’t get a shower before I dropped him off for school. Since my hair was a fright, I threw on a baseball hat before we left, because I knew I’d have to walk Owen into school. Still, after a year and a half, he has not embraced the valet service.
On the drive to school, Owen informed me that I was wearing a boy’s hat, and asked me why. I told him that my hair was messy and since I knew I’d have to walk him in, I put on the hat so no one would see my yucky hair.
Lo and behold, Owen informed me he’d walk in with his teacher today. I could stay in the car and drive off like every other mom has done for the past 14 school months. Since I had some extra time on my hands, I got to thinking … was he embarrassed by my boy’s hat, or is he a little Gandhi-in-the-making?
He was not very kind to me this morning when I told him he couldn’t wear his Omnitrix to school, so I wonder if he was making up for that. I’d like to think so, because a self-sacrificing five-year-old is a human anomaly, but it would just be one more way Owen’s a super kid.
More than likely, he was just embarrassed for his friends to see his mommy in a boy’s hat. But let me live out my Gandhi fantasy, OK?
Communicating with a soft-spoken five-year-old can be frustrating at times. As a rule, I try to be patient and calmly ask him to repeat himself, and he rarely gets frustrated having to say the same thing 27 times. Clearly, he did not get his patience from me.
As I was cooking dinner tonight, stirring a bubbling pot of chili while standing under the jet-engine stove vent that we simply had to have, Owen began whining.
I tried, I really did. Honestly, I didn’t really care that he lost the arm of one of his Ben 10 aliens while I was trying not to burn chili and keep an eye on the baking cornbread at the same time, but I matter-of-factly told him that I couldn’t understand him when he whined and that he’d have to say it again.
After several go-rounds of that, and me remembering that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results, I tried a new tact.
“Owen, I just can’t understand you. Could you please try communicating in a different way?”
Again, I may as well have been eavesdropping on the Taliban’s secrets for all of my understanding, but I gave it one last try.
“Owen, please communicate.”
“I can’t communicate,” growled Owen, finally showing some frustration.
“Clearly!” I snapped back at him, finally losing the precious little patience I had left and letting my innate sarcasm take over.
So, my literal boy (who is rarely ever literal, which is probably why I found this so funny) raised his voice and shouted across the kitchen to me: “I CAN’T COMMUNICATE!”
Yeah, you probably saw it coming, but needless to say, I was charmed that, even though I turned nasty, Owen really did keep trying to communicate … clearly. I’m confident that someday we’ll be able to understand each other, but that probably won’t be until after his teenage years work themselves out and he becomes an actual person.
Looking back, I’m amazed at how astute my young Owen was at the mere age of 25 months. His powers of observation, his listening skills, his innate understanding of … penis size.
Keith got Owen out of his bath one night and was getting ready to put on his diaper and jammies. Owen pointed at his own penis and said, “Penis.” One of his super powers is stating the obvious, don’t you know.
Then he said, “Daddy’s. BIG!” Another super power — sucking up!
After Keith thanked him (a good dad’s got to model manners, after all), Owen said, “Teeny one.”
Keith said, “Who has a teeny one?”
Owen’s reply? “Uncle Andrew.”
Keith asked Owen who told him that, and Owen’s reply was “Aunt Alyssa.”
For a kid who’s not necessarily in touch with reality, he seems to have had quite a grasp on this subject … no pun intended.