Sometimes I wonder if children are truly as funny as they act
or if it's on purpose. Do they realize how hilarious they can be and use
it as a defensive mechanism against parents, or do they just say
whatever comes to mind - spit it out without a second thought?
I’ve often contemplated this question during conversations with my
children over the years. They could be hilarious at times, but I
frequently considered if they meant to say the things they said, or if
it was all planned out for my benefit.
Ms. Quack-up
For instance, my daughter would often mispronounce things or use the
wrong words at the worst times. When her great-grandmother was sick,
she told her friends that she was suffering from semi-colon cancer. When
her little brother was having round after round of strep throat, she
explained to him that if he kept getting sick, he would have to have his
testicles removed. It would be sad, she said, if that happened.
Even in her confusion about the English language, my daughter cared
for her family, especially as she got older. She spent an entire year
sitting with her ailing grandmother and driving her to her dialysis
appointments when she had so many other things she could have been
spending time on. It was my daughter who talked me into allowing my
youngest to give me his kidney when I was worried about the consequences
for him.
She's not always good at showing her compassion for people, but it's there, and I love her for her caring heart.
Mr. Hilarious
My oldest son would do and say anything to get out of doing what he was told. Sometimes I knew he was purposely trying to get
my goat, but other times it just came unrestrained.
Son (5 years old): jumps out of the bathtub and runs to the living room. “Hey,
Mom, do you see my butt? If I turn around, you can see my…” (Well, we
know what we could see. It doesn’t bear repeating.)
Mom: “I’m gonna swat your…”
Son: runs back to the bathtub, dives in headfirst, and sprays water through the bathroom and out into the hallway.
Then there was the orange fight behind our apartment when we lived
in Florida. A friend from next door had given us a bucket full of
oranges a few days before; unfortunately, we couldn't eat them all
before they went bad in the heat, so the two of them decided to use the oranges under my friend’s direction as bombs. The back yard, the patio,
and every square inch of man and boy was covered in orange pulp.
Afterward, when my friend came out dressed in his white shirt for
work, Aaron jumped out from behind a bush and nailed him right in the
chest with the biggest, most rotten orange in the bucket. Smelly orange
pulp soaked through the white shirt, ran down the man's arms and legs, and
dripped off his chin.
My friend was furious, but Aaron declared, "I'm having too much fun for my own good!"
My friend may have started Battle of the Oranges, but Aaron was the clear winner. No punishment required.
The hilarity didn't stop when my son grew up. As a teenager, Aaron
was just as cheeky as he had been as a child. One day, as we headed down
a local street, we stopped at the crosswalk for a red light. Suddenly,
he began to roll his head and slap himself on the chest repeatedly with
the side of his hand. Then, he started to jerk side to side, forward and
backward, as the driver of the car to our right stared, her eyes wide
and her mouth dropping open. He could be so irreverent, but I couldn't
help but laugh at her reaction.
His understanding and concern for others were just as transparent as
his humor. Even though he and his sister and little brother fought a
lot when they were young, he would defend them to the bitter end, a fact
which he demonstrated one afternoon in the courtyard of our apartment
complex.
The neighborhood bully had been picking on his younger siblings that
day almost since the minute they stepped outside. Aaron could hear it
from the window and went out to "take care of it" while I called the
office about the issue. He asked the young man to leave his sister, who
was catching the brunt of the teasing, alone and stop bothering her; the
boy then laughed and went after her with a baseball bat. My son stepped
quickly into action, yanking the bat away from the boy. He dropped it
where he stood when the boy ran away, chased after the youngster, and
held him up by his collar. He loudly warned the culprit as he dangled
him high in the air that if he messed with his sister and brother again,
he wouldn't be so nice the next time. He then dropped the boy to the
ground and walked away.
Of course, the police were summoned and came to my door shortly
after the incident. After we explained the situation to the officer and
children from the neighborhood told him what they saw, we were all
surprised but relieved when he told my son he should be proud of
defending his siblings and restraining himself as he did.
"I don't know if I would have reacted the same way," the officer
said to me. "I probably wouldn't have dropped the bat." A proud day!
Monsieur Flatterie
Then there is my youngest. I’m sure he was purposely trying to be funny when he came up with his amusing lines. Like his comment on a warm afternoon in 1998.
He and I were sitting in our living room watching television when a
commercial came on for an exercise machine. The actress in the ad said
she was fifty years old but looked no older than thirty, and it was all
because of her workouts.
More to myself than to my son, I said, “Maybe I should get one of
those so I can look like that when I’m fifty.” I was forty at the time,
and he was six.
“Oh Mom,” he said, “you know you don’t need that thing.”
I thought a compliment was soon to follow, when I heard, “It’s nothing that a little liposuction and hair dye won’t fix.”
I love you too, son.
And yet, this loving son showed his true colors when he volunteered
to give me one of his kidneys and thus saved my life. Nothing I said or
did could dissuade him. He was determined to take this on, and I will be
forever grateful to him. It’s been two and a half years of life that he
bought me so far. I can't imagine a greater gift than that.
The Next Generation
Like his father, my grandson is a comedian in his own right. So many
unbidden comments come from his unfettered mouth, it’s hard to choose
what to tell and what to keep to myself.
I'll start with the day when, at a year old, AJ took my phone from
my hand as I was talking to his father and began to rattle on about some
serious subject in words only he could understand. When I asked for my
phone back, he held his finger up at me without a backward glance as if
to say, “Hold on a minute, Grandma, I’m not done.”
Just recently, he reminded me of his father's wit as we discussed a
lesson about witchcraft in colonial Salem. As we read about the actions
of the young girls in the courtroom who were reacting to a "spell," he
dropped to the floor and began writhing about, arms flailing and eyes
rolled back. Suddenly he began barking like a dog, to which his sister
countered by meowing like a cat. It was quite entertaining.
I was impressed, however, by his insight as we discussed an essay he
is working on for his writing assignment. He was given 107 writing
prompts to choose from; he chose to write about living forever. He
understood and explained to me the difference between living forever and
being immortal. To him, living forever could only happen if you were
never mortally wounded or suffering from an incurable disease; immortality on the
other hand means you can never die no matter what tragedy is heaped upon
you.
He told me he would rather live forever with the chance
that he could die because he could learn from events that happened in
the past and the present to make a difference in the future and maybe
save the human race. To be immortal would make it too tempting to take
that knowledge and use it to conquer the world, which would only make
the earth and its inhabitants disappear.
There's that compassion again. Like family, like offspring.
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AJ, Christmas 2018
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