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Thursday, September 30, 2004

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 Michael on 09/30 at 05:26 AM
Jamie • (11) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink
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