The Moments - Chapter 17: Drop It Like It's Hot

               It’s funny how unrelated events in the course of one day of Joey’s life can appear to me like parallel metaphors of each other. Ok, maybe it doesn’t happen often. And, maybe it only seems that way to me. But, you can decide if it makes for good reading. Enter an eventful Saturday (last Saturday, in fact) in my son’s life…
               As I had to work on this particular Saturday morning, my girlfriend, Krista, was kind

enough to stay with Joey and take care of him until I was off work in the early afternoon. After they watched a little TV and put together some puzzles, she took Joey to Percy Priest Lake to feed the ducks and geese that live there. After several minutes of letting Joey feed bread to the birds of the lake, Krista saw a little redheaded girl of about Joey’s age approach him and start chatting with him. He shared the bread with her that he was tossing to the birds, and the two of them had fun in their few minutes of instant connection. It’s always cute to see two toddlers have an “aha moment” when they act as though it’s fascinating to meet another little person. Krista wasn’t quite close enough to hear everything said between them, but she later told me that he, once again (see Chapter 11), didn’t know the little girl’s name when they left and he was talking about her.
               After their visit to the lake and another couple of errands, Krista and Joey surprised me at work as I was nearing quitting time. When Joey ran to me and started telling me about what he and Krista had already done, he mentioned a “girl with a feather” (sounds like a novel). He said that they fed the ducks together but that he “can’t remember her name.” Totally took me back to that afternoon at the Bounce Palace. Much like the “mysterious blonde” there, we now had another mystery woman – the “girl with a feather.” My son draws in the ladies, but doesn’t yet keep a little black book.
               After leaving my office, the three of us stopped at a Wendy’s for lunch. Krista and I poked a little fun at Joey over his new nameless girlfriend. He eventually said that, “I told her my name, but I can’t remember her name.” When asked if she had in fact told him her name, Joey assured us, “Yeah. I just don’t remember it.” My little player. We got a few laughs over it at lunch. Joey took a nap as soon as we got home to prepare for a fun afternoon.
               Before he woke up, I had decided to play Nintendo for a bit, and that is where he found me when he emerged from his bedroom. Asking to join me and the Mario Brothers for a while, Joey had me switch games to Super Mario Brothers 3 (one of the greats). While I have tried to keep his Nintendo-playing focused on Super Mario 1 until he figures out the basics, Joey has enjoyed the colors and graphics of Mario 3 (we all do!), and has us focus on it from time to time. I’m still working with him on basic video game-playing coordination, and he never gets very far in a game (yet). Each time his character “dies” on the game, I have taken to saying he was “so close,” which has made it a habit of Joey’s when we are playing as well. I had Mario in a position to play the first mini-fortress of World 1, and Joey wanted to handle the castle for us. However, he found his Mario in the first lava pit of the level a few times in a row, resulting in Mario’s “game over” status. “Why does we not want to fall in the lava?” Joey would ask. To which I replied, “Would you want to fall in hot lava? It burns!” Joey got it. He also lost interest soon enough that it wasn’t a problem.
               As I saw the wind picking up outside about the time Joey was finished with the

Mario Brothers, I suggested that we take his kite outside for a while. So, the rest of our afternoon was filled with kite-flying, a visit to the playground, and walking around to look for the ice cream truck that Krista and me thought we heard. It was a fun. All throughout, we made little jokes about him not knowing the name of “the girl with a feather.” At supper, I asked Joey if he had ever remembered her name, and he said, “No. But I told her my name.” To that, I asked, “Do you think she remembers your name, since you don’t remember hers?” He confidently and quickly said, “Yeah, she will remember my name.” After supper, Krista went home. As Joey and I were winding down, I felt like we had packed a lot of punch into one Saturday. As I usually do at bedtime, I got Joey talking about what all he had done over the course of the day. To me, the exchange sort of exemplified the off-the-wall comparison of two of his activities and the cavalier attitude he took with both of them, much like a suave player or a daredevil. Here’s our last conversation of the night:
               Me: We really had a big day, didn’t we, Joey?
               Joey: Yeah. We played with my kite.
               Me: Uh huh. And, you came to visit me at work. And, we ate at Wendy’s.
               Joey: And, I watched Veggie Tales. And, me and Krista fed the ducks.
               Me: With the girl with the feather…?
               Joey: Yeah.
               Me: But you don’t remember her name.
               Joey: No, I don’t remember it. But she knows mine.
               Me: And we played Mario.
               Joey: And I felled in hot lava.
               Me: (laughing) Yes, you did.
               Joey: Why did I fall in the lava?
               Me: I don’t know, son. Why did you fall in the lava?
               Joey: Because I was being so good.
               I quickly get tired of hearing the excuse, “you’re young, so you ought to _____.” However, in this case, Joey is young, so he ought to remember that girl’s name. Haha! As for Mario’s multiple brushes with death, I will either never get too serious about a few losses when I play Nintendo again or I’ll never take Joey near a volcano. Either way, he keeps the day fun and gives me a laugh at life.