When Jared was about just over a year old, I went with Kellie to Borders Books and Music, which is an odd name for the store since I’ve never seen anyone pay for their overpriced CDs. It ought to be called Borders Books, Lame Coffee Shop and the Colorful People Who Work There.
Anyway, Kellie was hanging out in the Art and Architecture section while Jared and I wandered through the store. At this age he was a pretty good runner, but he had a tendency to wobble into tables and knock things over, so I was carrying him so that he was facing me with his legs on my hip and my arms wrapped around him. We were just wandering around the store since he seemed content to just stare at me and grin and I couldn’t look at any books because it took two hands to hold my giant boy.
After a while we got bored and went to check on Kellie. She was facing the wall, as was another shopper. As we walked into the section, Jared, still grinning, grabbed my trachea with both hands and started squeezing as hard as he could. I gasped for air and gurgled a bit, but couldn’t really breathe or talk. I also couldn’t make him stop because of the way I was holding him. So I stood there, gurgling, and tried to slowly inch my hands around his body so that I could get them under his armpits and pull him away from me. Jared giggled a little.
I was afraid that if I pulled too hard or dropped him that he’d just hang on and crush my windpipe. If that sounds crazy, you evidently missed out on Jared’s strong and wild phase when family friends were calling him Mowgli. Just to catch you up, at 18 months he got angry and tore his bedroom door off the hinges. So I had a reason to be scared.
I finally got my hands into position and started lifting and pushing him away from me while scrunching up my neck and shaking my head to get him to let go. At that moment, 3 things happened:
Needless to say, they thought I was some murderous loon about to kill a little boy. And truth be told, they weren’t that far off from the truth. I mean, it certainly looked that way. Picture a man holding a baby at arms length with his face all red and purple blotches, eyes bugging out of his head and gasping for air. Not my finest hour.
So Kellie ran over and grabbed Jared away, and I sort of made some strange noises that fell short of intelligent speech. Mostly I just pointed at my throat. Shopping guy took off.
And I always held Jared so that he was facing away from me for the next 3 years.
Bonus Untold Tale:
Jared used do this cool trick at that age: he’d be sitting in a shopping cart smiling at you. You’d smile back and then he’d lower his head and bite you on the knuckle. When you lowered your head to try to pry him off, he’d lean back and slam your head against the handle of the cart.
It only took about a dozen bangs to the head for me to get wise to that one.
I’ve discovered a great source for news and information at The Spatula. What I like about it is that it seems to cover a lot of the stories that the mainstream media won’t and it does it with a unique spin.
The best part though, for me, is that users of the site can contribute their own stories to the members section of the site. And right now, I’m the featured member of the week! After this week, you’ll be able to find my article over in the members section where I’m hoping to see more examples of great citizen journalism in the future.
So check it out and let me know what you think of both my article and the site in general.
I’ve read a lot about dream research and the different theories behind why we dream and how our mind creates dreams, and I still don’t understand something. Why is it that you can have a dream that seems to have such a cohesive storyline about a plot that doesn’t make any sense?
I had a dream last night about my wife. She was trying to purchase something, I think it might have been a house, and the bank was telling her that there was something wrong with her signature on the check. So we went to the bank and sat down with the bank manager and she had all these diagrams of Kellie’s signature where she showed that clearly - clearly! - the second L in Kellie was different on her check.
She had magnifications, she had charts with reference arrows pointing to different parts of the loop, and she had little descriptions that included notes about where there was hesitation and even what the shape of the letters meant personality-wise. And Kellie showed her driver’s license to the manager, and that just set the lady off with more discussions of how the driver’s license was just like their reference sample and not at all like the signature on the check.
So they ask Kellie to sign another check, and when she does the manager just clucks her tongue and starts pointing out what’s wrong with the signature again. And she’s saying that somehow Kellie’s signature that she just signed in front of both of us is a forgery. All of which is driving me crazy.
And I start berating this woman, just tearing into her about how none of this makes sense. If Kellie’s signature on the reference sample matches the signature on the driver’s license and if the picture on the driver’s license matches her actual face, then she’s herself. And if she says that she signed the check, what’s the problem?
The manager looks at me and narrows her eyes and starts saying that I’m just on Kellie’s side because we’re married, and I tell her that I’m on her side because she’s right and none of this makes any sense. But the manager gets up from the desk and circles around trying to grab my hand to see if I’m wearing a wedding ring, so I start holding my hand stretched out behind me and backing away, but she catches up with me and right as she grabs my hand and starts prying my fingers apart I wake up.
This is why I never believed in dream interpretation.
The AP is reporting that Larry Craig will announce his resignation from the Senate this morning. While I think all republicans ought to step down on general principle for the way they’ve screwed this country up, this is terrible news. I, for one, would like to see an openly gay man in the Senate, even if it’s a republican.
I guess he must have taken the advice of Patrick Sammon, president of the Log Cabin Republicans, who says that Craig may not be able to continue serving in the Senate effectively. And I guess if Craig is looking for advice, that’s a good source. I don’t know anyone more in touch with what it’s like to be a self-loathing queen than the president of an organization dedicated to his own repression and discrimination.
Still, I’d rather that Craig stay in the Senate and come out of the closet. We might have to assign somebody to follow him into the bathroom to keep him out of trouble, but it’d be nice watching his fellow republicans squirm.