Her idea sounded very very Martha Stewart to me. I was 100% on board. Yesterday over breakfast, I started to tell my seven-year-old son, Tall, about the concept.
Me: So my friend mentioned a cool thing that we can do! We all write down ideas of things we would like to do this summer! Then, we can look over the lists and choose things together!
Tall: Wait, what is this for?
Me: For us. For the summer. We all come up with ideas of fun things, then we write them down and decide which ones to do. That way, everyone—
Tall: Nope. I don’t want to do fun things.
Me: (puzzled) What?
Tall: (suspicious) Who gave you this idea?
Me: My friend.
Tall:
Me: So, like I was saying, Tall, you can tell me what you want to do, and I guess I can help you write it down?
Tall: I’ll think about it, and let you know tomorrow.
Me: Let me know the fun things you want to do?
Tall: Let you know if I want to participate.
That afternoon after school, Tall asked me to help him with something.
“Mom,” he said sweetly, “I need to write your name here in cursive.”
“Why?”
“Because, uh, you know how I want to learn cursive? I can practice by writing your name.” He smiled up at me, big gummy holes where his teeth should be.
Honestly, I was flattered. My name! He didn’t ask me to write out the entire alphabet, he just wanted to practice his own mother’s name! This pretty much erased his negative attitude from earlier.
He handed me a piece of paper that was folded down in some strange way (I didn’t notice this important clue at the time), and I wrote in my best loopy script, “MOV.”
Later that evening, my neighbor came over to babysit the boys so The Husband and I could go out to a rare dinner by ourselves.
The next morning, I noticed this little gem taped to the TV cabinet:
MOV
sneaky, sneaky tall. MOV, I can't believe you fell for the old folded paper routine!
ReplyDeleteI wonder if Tall will want to participate in list-making or thinking about fun??
only if it involves forgery..........
ReplyDeletebest,
MOV