Yorick, Now With Bling

I think it was Karen Edmisten who talked about having special outings with mom that were actually trips to the grocery store, an idea I would have adopted if I did the grocery shopping for our family. Instead I am inviting a boy or two to come along for other errands -- last night to Lowe's (where the customer service was so awful that I bought nothing on my list, even the things I was able to find in that cavernous refuge for clueless and unhelpful teenagers, but we still had a nice time chatting as we wandered through the aisles) and tonight to Michael's. I am trying to get caught up on putting pictures into albums, which is not (as I may have mentioned once or twice before) my favorite thing. I ordered pictures from Snapfish earlier this summer, and put them in chronological order earlier this week, and I needed to buy that stupid scrapbooky double-sided tape so I could stick them down on album pages after the requisite hand-wringing about how much I dislike the sticking-down part.

I told the boys they could look around on their own while I was trying to find my stuff; they had a good time with the Halloween decorations. (On August 26! I ask you, what are the Halloween decorations doing on display in August? I do not approve.) "I want to find some plastic weapons," said Marty the 9yo. "Why are there no weapons here?" I offered him three different sets of pink and purple stickers instead -- perhaps the ones with a sparkly magic wand? or the ones with a dress with a nice big bow? or the ones with high-heeled pink slippers? I'd never noticed how much girly stuff predominates there, perhaps because I'd never gone to Michael's in search of plastic weapons.

He never did find weapons, but he found a skull covered with silver beads. He held it up at arm's length and apostrophized it. "To be or not to be," he started in -- and kept going! I have no idea where he picked it up. Motherhood is full of surprises. Sometimes they are the "who stuck this chewing gum under the couch?" kind of surprise. But sometimes they are much more pleasant, like posting about being a quirky kid who memorized poetry for fun and then discovering a similar quirk, hitherto unsuspected, in one of the boys.

Comments

[Summer]

Wow. If your kid spontaneously recites monologues from Shakespeare, you are definitely doing something right as a mother.

Much as I love Halloween, I agree with you that it is TOO EARLY for store displays. Two weeks ago, in the grocery store, I was looking for a few of their advertised super-cheap school supplies, so I headed to the aisle devoted to seasonal merchandise. In mid-August, "seasonal" should mean back-to-school and a clearance section of pool noodles and flip flops, right? Nope. It was packed entirely with orange and black boxes of fun size Snickers and jumbo bags of Dum-Dums. The school supplies, when I finally found them, had been wedged onto an end-of-aisle display near the laundry detergent and toilet paper. Clearly Halloween is more important (financially) than back-to-school!

[Jamie]

You know, Summer, if I had tried to get him to recite monologues from Shakespeare, I am certain he would have resisted. Totally agree on the back-to-school and end-of-summer expectations. I'm looking for apple-themed merchandise and finding leprous zombies instead. Harrumph.