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He’s back!

So Jamie’s hospital stay was mercifully brief.  Clearly, all your notes and e-cards and good wishes had a salutary effect-- and he really liked them, too.  (He’s on this kick these days about “what state” X person or thing comes from, so he was especially pleased to be getting mail from all over the place.) Thank you thank you thank you.

He’s resting, as he should be, which at the moment means something like “watching Scooby-Doo marathons and gradually forgetting that he knows how to do long division.” (Note to giant-insect readers:  Scooby-Doo was not my idea.  I urged him to check out the giant-praying-mantis production of Twelfth Night on PBS, but you know how it is with these kids today and their Internet attention spans and their foolish cultural-studies conviction that Shaggy is “subversive.")

I do have one narratable Jamie moment to pass along.  I’ll call it his Weird Developmental Milestone of 2004-- much weirder than driving a go-cart.  It’s Monday night and we’re driving to the emergency room, and Jamie’s in the back seat saying, “I don’t wanna go to the ER” and a wide range of variations thereon, like “no ER, try other kind,” and “maybe go someplace else instead of ER.” (He has a full quiver of such phrases for when he doesn’t want to do something.) But when he finds that these mild, reasonable objections aren’t having any effect, Jamie balls his fists and declares, “I hate the ER.”

Now, since he knows he’s not supposed to use the word “hate” (for example, in our house we say “I don’t care much for Bush lying us into Iraq” or “I strongly dislike the Swift Boat Vets lying about Kerry’s war record"), this is roughly the equivalent of dropping an F-bomb.  Or so he apparently thinks, because he waits a few long seconds to see if we’ll react in some way.  We don’t.  (How can we?  We don’t care much for the ER either!) And then we hear from the back seat, in a markedly different voice,

“Oh!  You hate the ER.  OK, then, we’ll go someplace else.”

Janet and I look at each other sidelong.  “Jamie,” I say, “are you making up words you want us to say?”

“Yes,” he says.

I told him that he was very clever.  And he is, you know.

So remember, folks, when all else fails, try making up things you want your interlocutors to say!  You might even fool your parents into thinking that one of them is actually speaking!  Or you can try it with creditors ("really, it’s OK if you skip this month-- we won’t mind”wink or political opponents ("say, my administration has been incompetent and corrupt!").

Later today, if all goes well, you might find me on the American Street.  In the meantime, thanks again for all your cards and letters!

UPDATE:  All has gone reasonably well.  Here’s today’s Street noise.

Posted by on 09/30 at 05:26 AM

  1. Wonderful news! And a wonderful story. It brought lacerates to my eyes.

    Thanks for keeping us posted on the good news. You have all been in my thoughts (and I don’t even know you).

    Give Jamie a big kiss from the blogosphere.

    John

    Posted by John Salmon (fka: Wanda Tinasky)  on  09/30  at  07:50 AM

  2. Thanks for the update Michael—good news indeed. (From so far north in New York State it is almost Canada.)

    Posted by  on  09/30  at  07:53 AM

  3. It’s great that Jamie is back home again. That’s great news.

    However this ‘making things up you want your interlocutor to say’ isn’t new, it’s a time-tested politicians trick (though they usually make things up that they want their opponent to say instead), so Jamie isn’t really inventing anything here. He’s only paying tribute to the election season and following in the footsteps of some of our greatest Americans.

    “My opponent John Kerry says that he wishes Saddam were president of the United States instead of me.  Well my answer to him is, too bad John and Saddam, I’ve got the job now and with your help I’ll be here for four more years” (cue applause and wild waving of American flags)

    But I have to admit that trying it in everyday life is a new idea. hmmmm....

    “You’d like to know if I want breakfast in bed tomorrow morning? Why yeah, sure honey....that would be great!  Thanks!”

    If she’s sleepy enough when I try it, it just MIGHT work…

    Posted by mrgarza  on  09/30  at  10:42 AM

  4. Right you are, mrgarza-- that’s what I get for letting Jamie watch so much of the campaign, I guess.  Soon he’ll be saying “my parents claim that I need to be in bed by nine, but I say, aren’t the Iraqi people better off without Saddam?”

    Posted by Michael  on  09/30  at  10:58 AM

  5. I’m happy to hear your son is recovering. My nephew recently had a similar bout and he is fully recovered in record time so I hope the same for Jamie. The habit of putting words in an opponents mouth is not new but has rarely been more blatently done than Cheney in particular in this campaign.

    Posted by  on  09/30  at  11:15 AM

  6. Very good news!

    (I knew a preschooler once who would say, answering for you, nodding in such a way as to encourage you to go along, the “yes” answer to whatever request they wanted - having observed parents doing it with baby sibling in order to encourage talking/articulating clearly...)

    Posted by bellatrys  on  09/30  at  11:59 AM

  7. Ray for Jamie.  And your right...he IS clever.

    With respect to the political use of similar techniques, there’s the one that sends me into a tailspin:  Bush says. “I don’t care if they do say (yatta-yatta)”,leading me to yell at the TV, “Who the hell said that, anyway?”

    Posted by  on  09/30  at  02:22 PM

  8. It’s great to hear that Jamie is doing better, the ER is no peice of cake!  But if I may offer a suggestion: When I was in fourth or fifth grade my teacher didn’t let me say hate, and I always resented not being able to voice my opinion.  Hate is a strong word, but keeping language from a child I think denies him or her the oppurtunity to experience a range of real human emotions.  Let Jamie say hate; my father (an English literature professor by the way) always taught me that there was no such thing as a bad word, and I always appreciated the chance to say what was on my mind.

    Posted by Ben Schacht  on  09/30  at  05:17 PM

  9. Hey, Ben, when it’s appropriate, it’s appropriate.  Sure, he’s not supposed to say it (and he gets this from school as much as he does from us), but when you’re talking about the ER, well, yeah, you can say you “hate” it.  What was so interesting about his use of the word Monday night, though, was that he clearly thought he was saying something non-negotiable:  see, I’m saying that word-- I must really be serious, folks.  And he kept saying it all the time they were inserting the IV in his arm, too.  We let him go right ahead and say whatever came into his head, honestly.

    Posted by Michael  on  09/30  at  05:50 PM

  10. "These aren’t the droids you’re looking for.”

    “OK, then.  We’ll go someplace else.”

    Go, Obi-Wan Jamie!

    Stefanie from Cibolo TX; Columbus, OH; Vancouver, WA; Minneapolis, MN; and currently La Crosse, WI

    Posted by  on  10/01  at  07:41 PM

  11. No question, the Force is strong with this one.

    Posted by Michael  on  10/02  at  03:43 AM

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