ambition- gone sticky

The kids love to hear real stories of any kind, especially about grown-ups when they were kids, and especially if those grown-ups misbehaved or did any sort of strange things. I am constantly telling them stories about my childhood; no matter how mundane they seem to me, the kiddos are riveted. Jason is still catching on to that concept, though, and usually tells them he doesn't have any stories to tell. Finally the other night when they were prying and begging him to reveal his past self, I told him "You do so have stories! It can be anything! Low standards, here- it's all interesting! What about Hoover?" (Hoover was his dog.) So he began a series of stories about the family pets, which the kids found completely hilarious. (This included a true tale of their dog Cocoa, also called "Piggy " who ate kittens, which I found quite disturbing. The children, though, were intrigued.)

So then, with this positive response from the audience, he moved on to tell the tales of some of his childhood companions, who, due to different situations and perhaps substances, took some different paths in life. One particular fellow who starred in a few of these tales, spent a year or so living under the highway in Bellvue. (His choice, so don't think I'm too callous for bringing it up like that.) Jason told the kids how this guy panhandled, but stayed a cut above the rest by keeping his area very neat and clean, and also, playing top-notch air guitar for his benefactors. The kids were, I think, completely blown away- first to think of an adult fun and crazy enough to play something called "air guitar..." And then- opportunity! -"camping," and playing air guitar, for money!?! This meant that all mom's talks about work ethic and doing something productive... they didn't really mean a whole lot. If there are jobs like this out there, why prepare for anything else! Let's just practice our strums! So after a great demo from Dad, they were off down the road to carefree, high-rolling musical careers.

This morning Josiah was eating his breakfast of choice- apples and peanut butter spread in a fan, with a little pile of "prooms" (prunes) in the middle. With no time to waste, he worked on perfecting his air guitar technique between bites. Suddenly, after about five prooms, he proclaimed with dismay, "Oh no! My air guitar is all sticky!" He carefully gave it a few good strums, but to no avail... He shook is head sadly and said, seriously, "All it will say now is proom, proom proom." He stopped playing. Naomi sighed, put down her milk and said, "Buzz, don't you know what air guitar really is? It's not really a guitar, it's just air pretending to be a guitar!"

What started as a granted request for stories from Daddy has turned into oh-so many teachable moments. So glad my children are learning.