The Styrofoam Glider and the Miracle Punt

The next installment in a series of daring arboreal adventures: you might remember last year when I pulled a a giant limb down with a football tied to a rope (I included the photo if you've forgotten) and now, once again, I have conquered another neighborhood tree-- this time (ironically just after we watched a Peanuts episode about the Wright Brothers, in which, as usual, Charlie Brown has a mishap with a kite) we were flying a giant Styrofoam glider and after Alex and Ian took a few turns, I wanted to show them how far I could throw it, so I wound up and winged it, just as the wind gusted, and it shot straight up and into the limbs of a tall sweet gum tree, sixty feet up (we were launching from a hill) but I brought the soccer ball to the park and, after twenty tries or so, I punted it loose . . . but then it got stuck in the same tree in nearly the same spot the next day, but miraculously, the next morning, it fell to the ground, unharmed, and though we finally broke it yesterday, we certainly got our seven dollars worth.

It's Hard to Pee Standing Up

This morning I observed how the apple doesn't fall far from the tree: my son Alex came out of our bathroom and said proudly, "I got all the pee in the toilet" but then he couldn't leave his story at that, and so he elaborated . . . "well, actually, I was getting some on the side so then I pulled it over a little so it was hitting the water but then it was going too low, so I had to move it up a little higher, and THEN I got it all in," and, just when I thought the tale was complete, he said, "and guess what?"-- which has become his signature phrase-- "I didn't flush!"

10/14/2009

My five year old son Alex let me in on the plan that he and his two friends concocted at school-- they are going to build robot replicas of themselves and send the robots to school in their stead; I asked him why he wanted to do this and if he didn't like kindergarten any longer, and he said, "I still like school, I just get tired in the middle of the day and want to take a nap," which-- I guess the apple doesn't fall far from the tree-- is exactly how I feel about teaching school.

The Apple Doesn't Fall Far, But Maybe It Should

The apple doesn't fall far from the tree: Alex was reading a Fantastic Four comic book when he noticed that a character in the comic book was reading the very same comic book-- he was so excited that he called me over to see it-- and then we talked about the possibility of a guy inside the little drawing of the comic reading a tinier version of the comic book, and the even tinier guy inside the tiny comic book doing the same thing, ad nauseum; maybe this will blossom into a predilection for meta-fiction like Tristram Shandy and if on a winter's night a traveler . . . maybe he will end up just like his dad, nerdy and well versed in novels that no one else has read.

4/9/2009

The apple doesn't fall far from the tree-- Alex said to me, "I don't know everything, Dad, but I know a lot."

The Doppelgangers is a Bad Name for a Sitcom

The apple doesn't fall far from the tree . . . Alex likes to use the right word for things, a fairly useless and frustrating characteristic; yesterday in the stroller, we passed by the house that has the same model and color Subaru as we do, and Alex reminded me of his fantasy about the family that lives there: that they are our twins in most every way-- number, age, appearance, etc.-- and then he asked me what we called them and I said, "I don't know" and made up a nonsensical rhyme of our last name and he said "No, not that kind of name" and then I remembered what word he was looking for . . . "our doppelgangers?" and he said, "Yeah, doppelgangers, they're our doppelgangers!" and I'm hoping he doesn't bring this up at pre-school because he's already weird enough.