He woke up with this on his mind

Just like most mornings, my alarm clock was the skinny little three-year old boy with the crazy rocker hair helmet and wide brown eyes, screaming loudly across the minimal square footage of our tiny vintage apartment, "Moooooommmmmy! What are you doing? I'm awaaaake! It's morrrrrning, Mommmmmmy!"

I had a medicine hangover this morning and padded into his room with my eyes still half-closed. I scooped him up, stopping at his request to pick up Big Cliffy, an awkwardly large Clifford the Big Red Dog that my mother obviously got him and not me. Before we got back to my room and fell into bed, in the fourteen steps between bedrooms,he blurted out the thought that I suspect woke him up earlier than normal.

"Mommy," he had an earnest look on his face, "Do TV stations have a hole in them so the people from TV shows can crawl out?"

I smiled.

"Do you want to know how television stations work?," I asked. And then I proceeded with some explanation of the transmission of signals that surprised even me.

He listened quietly, nodded his head and then asked, "But what about Super Readers? How do they get out?"

"They're cartoons...drawings," I said, "Sometimes, like Super Readers, it is art work made with the computer."

"Mommy!" he snapped back with a tone that Bruce and I fondly call I.D., or Implied Dumbass because the name-calling is inferred so heavily it doesn't need to be uttered out loud. "You cannot draw on a computer with crayons and markers! That's not a good idea."

"You're right," I said. "You should never draw on a computer with crayons and markers."

An image of this preschool creature leaning across my keyboard and decorating my monitor screen with a teal Crayola marker made me shudder. I let the cartoon technicalities go. Anyway, he seemed satisfied and there will be plenty of time to answer those questions tomorrow morning.

Comments

[zoe]

I LOVE THE ID!!! My 5 year old uses that tone on an hourly basis. Now I have a word for it. Thanks so much.