Speechifying
by
Jeff Stimpson © 2005
In presentations I state that I've never had a
conversation with Alex. This is no longer strictly true, and it's
about 10 miles from true with Ned.
With Ned, the language flows. Take, for instance,
the morning about a month ago when we were walking from the subway
to his kindergarten and I asked him to look up at me. His face was
dirty. "Ned," I said, "when we get to school, I want to stop by the
bathroom and wash your face."
He looked back down at the sidewalk. "They don't
have a bathroom," he said.
"What?"
"They don't have a bathroom at my school!"
he said.
"What do you mean they don't have a bathroom at
your school?"
Stage pause. "Dad," said Ned, "it's a joke!"
Nice delivery, and precise mimicry of
incredulousness and whining on "school," but I have no clue where he
got this disruptive characteristic. Then again, Ned is revealing
himself to have a catacombed mind, and even at age four he'll
occasionally let go with the variety of poetry one usually sees only
in undergrad literary magazines. One recent bedtime, he and I were
discussing trees. "There are all kinds of trees," Ned said. "Apple
trees. Pear trees. Cherry trees. New Jersey trees..." I also have
reason to believe that Ned said the following after hearing "The
Three Bears" in his after-school playgroup: "Goldilocks was
invisible and then she died. The three bears played soccer."
I can converse with him to that pinnacle of human
communication: the argument. The evening that Goldilocks kicked off,
I took Ned to dinner and then some household shopping. In the
drugstore for cat food (Toast doesn't talk yet), Ned grabbed a
little plastic pistol key chain that, when he pushed a button, made
about three screechy noises that went through my head like nails. I
told him we were not buying the key chain. He countered that he was
due a toy, and he was, but, I assured him, it would not be that
pistol on a key chain. We spatted. "You can't come to my birthday!"
he said at last. Yoo-hoo! I thought, realizing that Ned's birthday
this year falls on a Sunday afternoon during football season.
Later, on the bus home, he uncrossed his arms and,
by way of apology, said, "Okay, you can buy me a really big
Transformer for my birthday. If you want."
Though still not straying into what anyone would
mistake for chat territory, Alex is actually talking more, too.
There are times when Alex will spit out a wholly appropriate word,
such as "Lights!" when I ask him to turn out the lights. And he's
made himself like all other kids himself in the sense that he's much
more motivated to do what we want when he, in turn, wants something.
For instance, Alex hasn't been in daytime diapers for routine Number
One for a quite a while, and we were coming home in the elevator one
recent afternoon when, beginning to dance on one foot, he said,
clear as any president during any State of the Union, "I - want - a
- diaper!"
(As I also say in presentations, I hope Alex hears
that story someday, and yells at me for it. I don't know if that
will ever happen, but I hope it will.)
"Binkie!" Alex barked in my face one evening when
he was tired. "Go to bed! Take a NAP!" Alex likes to
talk in italics and caps, such as whenever there's something on our
TV screen that isn't red and furry and has a voice like a plastic
pistol key chain ("Watch ELMO!"), or whenever he thinks there
aren't enough crumbs on the living room floor ("Want CRACKERS!").
"How about pretzels?" Jill said once.
"How about crackers!" Alex replied.
Jill has managed to confine Alex's saltine eating
to his little dinner table; he used to eat them in front our TV, and
as a result our entertainment unit must have been featured in more
than a few cockroaches' Zagat Guides to New York. In front of the TV
remains his favorite spot for crackers, however, and - again with
mainstreaming himself - he will, like a normal kid, sneak back there
with the bowl of crackers when he thinks we're not looking.
"Alex! At the table!"
He heads back without a word. Both boys have
learned what it means when their parents talk in italics.
Copyright 2005 Jeff Stimpson, all rights reserved
