Thursday, January 25, 2007

Now, That's Amazing!

So, this is the kind of week that my wife had:

She decided to visit an upscale vitamin store near our city's center in order to buy a natural remedy of some kind. I've never been there, but my wife describes it as a holistically beautiful store with quiet, soothing music and delicious fragrances wafting through the air. It's like a Starbucks but with more drugs. My wife was so intent on getting her natural remedy that she broke the cardinal rule for preserving soothing, relaxing environments.

She took my my kids.

I'd like to say it started out well, but it didn't. My four year-old son skipped into the store happily, took a moment to get oriented in the beautifully designed, healthy environment and then he vomited. Literally. We have no idea why. Strangely enough, the health professionals at the store were not happy to see this potential client and when my family left, my wife looked behind to see a salesperson propping open the door to let air in.

A few days later, our family went to a pizza parlor. A friend of my seven year-old son accompanied us. During the middle of the meal, while the kids played with Star Wars action figures, Gabriel's friend entertained us with a rap song. I didn't listen closely at first, because I'm a Public Enemy fan and I like to kick it old school. Also, by now I think the shorties understand I'm the sickest MC.

Still, on his second time through the rap, I noticed that my wife and most of the other patrons in this restaurant were staring in the direction of this kid. And that's because one of his rhymes has just ended with the word "whore". Later, after my red-faced wife had explained why that word is bad, she whispered to me, "I'm amazed at what comes out of kid's mouths these days."

I shrugged because this sounded like something an old person would say.

A few days later, my family and I sat down at another restaurant. The food was great. My two year-old daughter Riley loved the food most of all. She ate all of her fries, she ate most of her grilled cheese sandwich and she even helped herself to a generous portion of Julian's macaroni and cheese.

Then Riley turned to my wife and started upchucking on her. This was no regular upchucking either. It manifested itself like an elaborate magic trick. Everything came out compartmentalized, neat and in reverse order. First, the mac and cheese came, followed by the grilled cheese. Then we saw some of lemonade Riley had quaffed just after her fries. Finally, the fries came out, too. It was like someone had drilled a core sample on my daughter's stomach and neatly deposited a geographic history of her meal in my wife's lap.

My wife looked really stressed while she cleaned up the mess and I wanted to say something helpful.

"You were right," I said.

"About what?" she asked as she grabbed extra napkins.

"It really is amazing what comes out of kids' mouths these days."

1 comment:

BlueGus said...

As always, I love your writing. As a father of two young boys I definitely relate to what you are saying.

A few months ago, my four year old son came up to me in the morning as we were getting ready to leave for school. I was in a nice blue pin-striped suit. One of my favorites. He approached me and said, "Daddy, I don't feel so . . ." and before he could finish the sentence he projectile vomitted all over me.

Keep in mind that the kid was easily 18 inches away from me but somehow managed to get EVERY drop of vomit on my suit. I swear, not a single drop hit the floor (other than that which dropped off the suit moments later.)

Anyway, love the blog.