When he opened that box this weekend, it was like Christmas. A Spider-Man costume! A Darth Vader costume! A Clone Trooper costume! Where did they come from? Can he wear them right now? Well, the Clone Trooper one he could. The others were still a little long in the leg. It’s hard to fight the force when your Darth Vader gown is tangling up in your feet the whole time.
As a result, we’ve been host to a very small Clone Trooper all week. The bedroom has been rechristened “the barracks,” much to Tad’s dismay. No meal will be accepted unless it is introduced as “barracks food,” and then it is wolfed down heartily because, hey, it takes a lot of barracks food to feed a Clone Trooper!
Most of our conversations center around this Clone Trooper (at said Clone Trooper's insistence), and how surprised we are to find ourselves in the company of a Clone Trooper, and how fortunate it is that we already own several appropriate weapons for the Clone Trooper to use should he need them. And then we have to go watch Star Wars movies and eat barracks popcorn.
It’s not really a bad setup. The only time it gets exasperating is when we have to explain for the eighty badrillionth time why he can’t wear the long-sleeved polyester Clone Trooper suit to the playground in 100-degree weather. But other than that? Being a Clone Trooper host family is all right.
Also, on a totally unrelated topic, my parade of dusty, anachronistic hits just keeps coming. I was trying to describe someone to Tad the other night over dinner, and, in attempting to pinpoint his accent, I mentioned that he had "a Balki Bartokomous thing happening." Tad just kind of slowly put his fork down, folded his hands in his lap and stared at me. Sadly. Like he was deciding what home to go ahead and put me in.
And on a third and final unrelated topic (hey, whaddaya want, it’s the weekend), we were reading a picture book about endangered species as a bedtime story the other night, and when we got to the Crested Ibis, The Boy sat bolt upright and shouted “THAT’S IT!”
“That’s what, Buddy?”
“That’s the hairdo I want!”
So. Um. Yeah. HAPPY WEEKEND, INTERWEBS! See you on the flip side!
“Do you think the music will be rocking-out?” he asked dubiously when I told him I’d signed him up for a music class. “You know, I’m not going to like it unless it’s rocking-out.” He cocked an eyebrow at me, as if I had never met him and needed to be briefed. “Because that’s what I’m into, rocking-out music.”
“Yes, I know that’s what you’re into, but sometimes it’s good to try new things and see if you might like them, too,” I said, feeling tired already. It’s our hope that he’ll get the cheesy alternative rock out of his system early, maybe even by middle school, and eventually be some kind of classical or jazz prodigy. That’s what we tell ourselves, anyway, as we are suffering through yet another playing of the latest Breaking Benjamin or Cryoshell XL-102 hit. It makes it bearable. Almost.
“What instrument am I going to play in this class?” He crossed his arms and frowned. “It better be the guitar.”
“Buddy, I don’t know if they’re going to have guitars there. But you’ll get an instrument. It might not be a guitar, though.” The very nice Jack Johnson-esque guy who took my information told me that they would provide instruments. He didn’t say what instruments, but I was pretty sure we were talking more along the lines of tambourines and maracas and not so much Stratocasters and Flying Vs.
“But what if they give me an instrument I hate?” The Boy threw his hands up in dismay, pacing back and forth across the bedroom. “What if they give me a trambone? I can’t stand trambones!”
OK, so maybe he won’t be a jazz guy. “I promise you they won’t give you a trombone,” I said with almost 100 percent certainty. “We’ll just have to wait and see what instruments they have tomorrow.”
When we arrived today, the Kindermusik teacher greeted us at the door in cargo shorts and bare feet. Mellow! The Boy took his place on a carpet square alongside about 15 fellow Kindermusicians. The skeptical look on his face had me worried at first, but as soon as the teacher launched into “Row Your Boat,” The Boy forgot all about guitars and trambones. For the next 45 minutes, he sang, danced, clapped and marched his heart out as if he’d been Kindermusiking all his life.
The instruments were even less rocking-out than I’d envisioned. Clapping blocks and clacking sticks. That’s it. And scarves to wave to the quiet songs, but I don’t think scarves are an instrument so much as a prop. And every time it was time to put an instrument away, the teacher would sing the putting-away song in his mellow barefoot voice. “Gently put the blocks away, blocks away, blocks away …” and, like magic, everyone would line up and put their blocks or sticks or scarves in the box.
“I think mercenaries sing that after a raid,” Tad whispered. “They sing, ‘Gently put the rifles away.’ ” I shushed him. Besides, it was snack time. Snack time! There were goldfish crackers, of course, and little juice boxes and bunny grahams.
“Did you like music class?” I asked The Boy when we were on the way home.
“Yes, but I wish they had a stage,” he sighed, staring out of the car window and contemplating a world tour. “And a microphone. Next time I’m going to ask the teacher if I can have a microphone.”
Mr. Mellow, meet The Boy. I hope you can handle him.
Speaking of laughs, I got the giggles. I got a bad case of the giggles and disturbed everybody else’s reading. Finally, Tad put his book down and gave me the hairy eyeball.
“What’s so funny about Vegetarian Times this month?”
“
“A word to the old,” Tad advised, shaking his head and picking up his book. “If you don’t want me to make fun of your dusty references, you might want to leave off with the Little Rascals quotes, just for the immediate future.”
But how can I when they are so funny?
Most people don’t realize that I am 9 years older than Tad. We didn’t realize it ourselves when we first met, which is the only reason we’re here today to tell the tale. I assumed he was considerably older than he actually was, and he assumed I was considerably younger than I was, and by the time we figured out the truth, we were already having a good time hanging out, so we kept hanging out. We’re still hanging out, only now, as part of that hanging out, he likes to pick on me for being old.
Sometimes when I repeat myself, he’ll cut me off with a wave of his hand: “You already said that, Grandma,” he’ll interrupt. Or if I mention cassette tapes or VHS recorders or anything else that has fallen by the wayside, he’ll sigh, “Nobody knows what you’re talking about, Aunt Beru.” (You will note that his frame of reference for anyone who is a doddering, elderly aunt is Luke Skywalker’s aunt, so I would be perfectly within rights to respond, "I may be old, but at least I’m not a Star Wars nerd," but I don’t, because I am the nice one in our family, so there.)
A lot of times, I walk right into it by using a phrase or a word that pegs me as a dusty old fossil without even realizing it. And, unfortunately for me, these kinds of words always seem to slip out when I’m indignant about something or giving Tad a big lecture. I don’t know what it is about self-righteousness, but it makes me pull some really archaic terms out of the old trunks in my mind. That, in turn, makes Tad point and laugh and call me Grandma, which makes me even more indignant, and none of it ever leads to a good end. For me, anyway. Tad always comes out ahead — he gets a good laugh, and I storm off disgustedly and stop yelling at him, so he wins. And I, of course, lose.
A while back I got really outdone with the condition of the TV room. It was filthy! I had just cleaned it! And now it was a huge mess! How could this happen? Well, I’ll tell you how it could happen! It could happen because certain people treat our home like a Bowery flophouse!
As if the floor wasn’t cluttered enough already, now I had a 200-pound goofball rolling around on the floor, wheezing with laughter and pointing his finger at me as he crowed about being in a Bowery flophouse. Which did not improve my mood one bit.
“Whatever! I’m going up to Crossroads to get a coffee while you clean this room.”
“Watch out for cutpurses!” he hollered after me, which led to a whole new round of wheezing and guffawing. As I slammed the door behind me, I could just catch him calling, “Perhaps you should take a velocipede!” Aha ha ha. You guys should all be so lucky to live with a comedian. It’s a laugh a minute, I tell you. If you’re him.
