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I’ve been out of town this week away from my home, my wife and my son. Shortly before I left I was alone with Squirts for a few minutes watching TV. I think it was a new cartoon called “Kick Buttowski.” Can you believe that’s the name of a kid’s cartoon?
Anyway, that seemed like a good moment to talk to Squirts about my being gone for a few days. The conversation went something like this.
One night this week, I was in the family room listening to Squirts and his mommy go through the nightly pre-bedtime ritual: brush teeth, use mouth wash, go potty, and head to bed, all narrated with a steady chatter of dialogue between the two. But then, as they moved from bathroom to bedroom, the normalcy of the routine was broken. Squirts punctuates the ongoing conversation with an appropriately confused, “What the hell?!”
Yes, our four-year-old son busted out with “What the hell?!” And, I later learned, he had used the phrase in a correct, though totally inappropriate, context. The outburst was, of course, followed by his mommy’s calm, but insistent explanation about the evils of words like that. Squirts apparently understood the potentially dire consequences of the phrase he’d just used, because the last thing I heard him say before the bedroom door closed was, “Mommy, please don’t tell daddy what I said.”
We have been talking about love around here the past few weeks. We have been trying to help Squirts differentiate what in life is worthy of his love and what might deserve other levels of appreciation.
When he announced how much he LOVED the remote control monster truck Santa brought him, I must admit I swelled with a little pride that his mom and I had been so in-tune to his Christmas desires. Of course, the fact that he made it clear in no uncertain terms that he wanted Santa to bring a monster truck made it pretty easy.
But, we took that opportunity to tell him that love was something he should think about saving for people and that, probably, he really liked his truck a whole lot.
When he said he LOVED the World Wrestling action figures on the television commercial and that he had to have those to play with, I also swelled with a little pride. But mostly because I resisted my own instinct to jump up, turn the T.V. off and forbid him from ever watching it again if that’s what he was learning from it.
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Nothing tests my faith more than the evil rantings of a 4-year-old.
And make no mistake – I had no doubt that Squirts’ mind, body and soul had been possessed by Satan himself. What else could explain the five-octave drop in his voice, the defiant stare of his now-dilated eyes or the smoke seeping from his ears (I swear I saw smoke!) as he declares storming toward his room:
“I will NEVER put on my Crocs and you are not my Daddy any more!”
Not five minutes earlier, he had been regaling me with a description of his dream sandwich: tear off a piece of wheat bread; put on a pancake with syrup; add gummy bears and leave off the mayonnaise. My response to this about-face in attitude: dust off the Yellow Pages and turn to letter “E” for exorcist. And I’m not even Catholic.
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