The Moments - Chapter 23: Breakfast with Santa, Dinner with the Doctor, and a Lesson in German

          From the time Joey began speaking more than a word at a time, I was fascinated by the progression with which his verbal abilities developed.  From the way one word could mean ten things in the beginning (He called every female human “Momma” for a while, and “That one” could mean several different Elvis songs.) to the humorously incorrect phrasing and pronunciation that was common as he spoke more in sentences, I just never could listen to him enough.  Whether it was the joy of simply hearing him say “Dadda” to me or deciphering the meaning of “Alvin pooted,” every word and expression was, and still is, meaningful.  More than just speech patterns though, listening to Joey speak is increasingly more of a window into his mind – the thought processes and memory focus – that never cease to make me think and look at him with wonder.  Over time, some of those thoughts and recollections have been very random but have always reminded me that my son was born with a creative mind and a memory like a steel trap.  Allow me to give three examples that occurred quite close together last Spring…

          Even now, the topic of Christmas is frequently on Joey’s mind.  Visions of sugarplums just keep dancing in his head.  Last year, though, this was a particularly strong pattern.  Whether he was asking if we had Yuletide decorations up in August or he was contemplating what he wanted as gifts as early as June, the birthday of Jesus was a party that my son sought to plan all year.  Joey is also safety-conscious.  One Thursday morning, last April, Joey had a random thought at breakfast.  After watching a cartoon with no noticeable Christmas focus, while eating waffles and bacon, Joey randomly delivered the thought, “I don’t want Santa to come down the chimney, because he might get burned.”  Pausing (and laughing in my mind) at the randomness of the statement but realizing that Joey was thinking of his mother’s house, where there is a fireplace, I replied with, “Yeah, we don’t want Santa to get burned. But I think his magic keeps the fireplace from hurting him where people have one. Here, he just comes through the door or the window.”  As the conversation briefly continued, Joey didn’t completely give up on his safety concerns for Santa Claus, but he seemed to accept that I wasn’t totally shooting him down.  We both hold great respect for the Man in Red.

          The next night, Joey spent mealtime entertaining me in the style of Dr. Seuss.  The works of Theodor Geisel have long been among Joey’s favorite literature and we tend to go in waves of reading one or two of his books several times over a given period of time.  Last Spring, one of the commonly revisited works of Seuss was “There’s A Wocket In My Pocket” – a fun book and a classic example of Seuss’s nonsensical poetry.  As we sat at the table, just Joey and I, eating pepperoni pizza along with carrots and ranch dip for supper, Joey grinned and began channeling his inner Seuss.  “Look, Daddy. There’s gands on my hands! And there’s a nizza on my pizza!”  He wanted a laugh, and he got one.  Then, he said, “You try it, Daddy.”  As I put a carrot in the ranch, I smiled at him and said, “There’s a slip of the dip.”  Now, Joey laughed and continued, “There’s a nilk in my milk. There’s a natapillar in my caterpillar.”  His dramatic stretching of “natapillar” and “caterpillar” added an extra tone of gravitas to this exercise, and a reminder that he has a flare for the dramatic.  As I was behind him, refilling our drinks, I saw him proudly raise a carrot to add a verse, “There’s some nip in my dip, and there’s narrots on my carrots.”  Noticing how focused on the letter “N” he was, I offered the idea, “Could there be a zate on my plate?”  With a laugh, Joey quickly informed me, “No, Daddy. That doesn’t make sense.”  I stood corrected but so very impressed by Joey’s fascination with the poetic style he had picked up through one of the simplest Seuss books we were accustomed to reading.  While Joey had given me some very profound (for a three-year-old) mealtime thoughts over two consecutive days, my springtime education was just beginning.

          Two weeks after we enjoyed breakfast with Santa and dinner with the Doctor, Joey shared a bit of his perspective on foreign language education.  After picking him up from his mom’s house, we proceeded to run a couple errands.  As frequently was, and sometimes still is, a drivetime pastime for him, Joey asked me to let him play with our Garmin GPS device – or the “Garden,” as he called it for a long time.  Joey knows how to make the Garmin take us home, and he likes watching the map move.  He’ll often go to a screen where he can type letters and numbers, too.  He actually uses it to practice his counting sometimes.  On this particular occasion, we were heading to Kroger when Joey typed several letters and then passed the Garmin forward to me.  “Tell me what I spelled, Daddy,” he said.  Normally, when he did something like this, putting random letters together, I would do my best to give a phonetic pronunciation to what was likely an illegitimate word.  This time, he had me stumped.  How does one even try to pronounce “Ogdsscgxfoc” and “Ffrydcxxmxkk”? (Props to Joey for injecting the word “fry” in there, though.) Looking and pondering for a moment, I handed it back to Joey and said, “Well, son, I’m not sure what those words are. Could it be something in German?”  My little genius’s instant response was classic (and boldly honest), “Well, there’s not a “J” in it.”  I laughed and didn’t question him.  Indeed, the letter “J” was nowhere to be found.  And, apparently, all those years I took French never taught me that German words simply do not have a place for the “J.”  From that, we took our English-speaking selves to Kroger. 

          My son is many things and possesses more great qualities than I could begin to name.  But whether he is showing himself to be concerned about the health and safety of a jolly man who enters his home like a ninja or showing what a lyrical poet he can be or schooling his Daddy in a foreign language, he does it all by turning the smile on his face into the laughter of my heart.  That’s one of the beauties of having a great kid in your life.  Even if you’re not blessed to enjoy “the Joey show” as much as I am, I hope there is a little one adding some of that laugh to your life.