A Vacation Souvenir

It was an instant karmic event.

J2 found a stick of gum on the sidewalk, and convinced his brother, J1, that it was from the hotel room and got him to eat it. Then, once it was in his mouth, J2 yelled "ewww, you're eating sidewalk gum!!!!!", turned around to run, and ran smack into the corner of a square stucco (hence the complimentary scrap marks) column.

I keep trying to tell them about universal law, someday they'll believe me.

Jonah Had an Amazing Dream

If you really want insight into what's up in your children's psyche, ask them about their dreams. When we wake up, sometimes at dawn, sometimes at noon, we ask each other "Did you dream last night?" Sometimes we do, and sometimes we don't.

This morning, (really afternoon, but I didn't want you to know what slobs we are), when Jonah woke up, he climbed up in the big bed, and asked me just that. I told him that I had a lot of dreams the night before, (mostly involving my standard garden variety losing my car in a parking garage and having to walk uphill to get home) and he said so did he.

While I tried to remember some more of what went on in my dreams, Jonah told me about his. It was one of the best ones ever and I need to write it down before it disappears, like tears in the rain. (I lifted the 'tears in the rain' from "Blade Runner" so don't be too impressed.)

Anyplagiarized, he said that in the dream, it was years from now, when I was really old, "like in my sixties or something". I laughed when he said that. We were sitting together in the living room, watching TV and came across a movie that was about my life.

"My life?" I asked. "Yes, your life. It was like that Jersey Shore show on MTV"
"Like a reality show?" I asked, feeling horrified. "Exactly" he said.

My immediate response was "Oh shit". Did my Aunt Evie really get me on "The Biggest Loser"? Or, even worse, I finally won Intervention, or, good Lord, "HOARDERS"!!! This was the insight into the true feelings of my children I had been dreading all my life.

Reluctantly, I asked him if it involved an intervention or camera's barging into our house in general, and did it freak him out? Jonah started laughing that good belly laugh he gives me when I crack him up.

"No, it was about your life and all of the things you've been through."

"We were sitting together watching TV and we stumbled across the movie. We didn't know who made it, and were surprised to find it. It started when you were little and went through all the years and the things that happened to you. There was a lot about how you always tried to help people, no matter what. In one part, you got angry at someone because they were doing something that made you not be able to help them.

In the last scene of the movie, I'm in a car driving through the desert looking for you". Let me mention that we had been in Las Vegas last week for the holidays with our family.

"Am I lost?, Were you afraid?" I ask.

"No, I knew exactly where you were and just needed to drive there. There's a girl in the car, and she's annoyed with me for taking so long. We stop at a truck stop and she runs off with a trucker but I don't really care. I'm kinda glad because she was annoying. So I just get back in the car, and drive some more through the desert, looking for you. And then I woke up."

Payback

The two J's have more access to electronic devices than any child should have. Most of our children do. Along with this freedom, comes new lessons for all of us.

A couple of months ago, J2 walked away from the computer without signing out of Facebook. His brother, J1, took that opportunity to post the following on J2's status. "I LIKE PENIS". I was the first to discover it, because I'm all up in their computer use. After much ado, the post was removed and we all moved on, thinking the lesson had been learned.

HA! Not so fast.

Later that same evening, we were playing a board game which our good friend RWC brought over. It's called "Worst Case Scenario", and is a litmus test for how long you would survive in anarchy.

During the game, J1 is constantly texting someone. It behoves us to ask whom he's texting with so hot and heavy, and he says it's a girl he knows from school. After several hours, J1 sets down his cell phone and goes to use the restroom. J2, who must have been patiently waiting for the opportunity, calmly picks up J1's cell phone and texts "I LIKE PENIS".

J2 then calmly puts the cell phone right back where he found it, as he whispers to us what he did. This kid is absolutely diabolical. With the eye's of an angel, and the soul of a poet, he'll lull you into complacency, and just when you think he's forgotten what you did, he swoops.

When J1 came back into the living room, he picked right up texting where he had left off. Unfortunately, the girl at the other end had gone away. Perhaps I should have stepped in, but it was like on Star Trek where they can only observe or you change history. I decided to let it play out.

It was hysterical. RWC and I watched the whole thing transpire, like we were watching television. You just can't pay for that kind kind of entertainment. Oh, and by the way, I won "Worst Case Scenario" because women always live the longest.