So we were cleaning up after Christmas, all chipping in to put away the decorations. I was at work on the tree, removing the ornaments and separating them into fragile and non-fragile bins. Wendy was working on the general house decorations, and Kiernan was working on keeping his DoodlePro up to date.
At some point in the game Kiernan decided to start helping me get the ornaments off the tree. I wasn't exactly excited to get this offer of help from him, as I knew it would mean the job would probably take longer, but I wasn't about to refuse his offer of help either.
So we worked together, taking the ornaments off the tree and sorting them. Every time Kiernan would take an ornament off the tree he would ask me, "Daddy, is this one fragile?" This was a great thing for him to do, but also the key reason why my task was going to take much longer to accomplish. Oh well. No biggie.
At one point I left the tree to attend to something in the kitchen. Getting dinner ready. Opening a bottle of wine. Whatever.
From the other room, Kiernan asked, "Daddy, is this one fragile?"
As I walked back to Kiernan I replied, "If you dropped it on the floor, would it break?"
Now, two things occurred to me at almost the same instant as I said this. One was that this was a logical question to ask. A logical way to get a toddler to understand the concept of 'fragile'. The other thing that occurred to me was that I was an idiot.
No sooner had the words left my mouth than I saw Kiernan, from across the room, drop the ornament he was asking about onto the floor.
He did this without malice. Without any emotion whatsoever. He wasn't trying to be cute or sarcastic. He was simply responding to my question in the most logical way his mind told him to. "If you dropped it on the floor, would it break?" Well, there's a pretty easy way to figure that one out, isn't there?
Fantastic. It's laughs like the one that followed that I will remember.
Oh...and the ornament didn't break
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6 comments:
BIG lesson in child rearing. WE learn as they grow!! Glad the ornament wasn't that $1M dollar heirloom one we gave you years ago! :-) Gammy & Grance
TITLES:
"If you dropped it... would it break?" What a beautiful metaphoric book title.
As a former Prinzivalli, I am still trying to grasp the title "Must Be Italian."
Anybody wanna take a stab?
Okay, I guess not. Do people ever come back and check the comments after they leave comments, or am I the only one who does that?
Oh well, as only my friend Suzanne noted, "Must Be Italian" refers to a quote in the excellent film A Christmas Story. The father receives a prize in the mail and the box is marked "Fragile". He pronounces it, "Fra-jeeel-ay" and declares, "Must be Italian."
So there you have it. Unfortunately none of you will check this comments thread and so this explanation is doomed to sit here like the proverbial tree that fell in the forest.
Sigh.
[Don't mind me. I've been reading a lot of Calvin and Hobbes lately.]
Thanks for explaining the title! Makes sense. Now, what did the title mean from an earlier post? The title was something about earning armsleeves or something?
Hey Jeni! Great to see a comment from you.
The post title was "Earn More Sessions by Sleeving". It's from the film Roxanne, and it's one of my favorite silly moments in movies. Charlie yells, "Ten more seconds and I'm leaving!" Roxanne, who has stormed into the house and left him on the porch, comes back out and asked what he said. He repeats and asks what she thought he said.
-"Earn more sessions by sleeving."
-"What does that mean?"
-"I don't know, that's why I came back out."
Doesn't perfectly apply to the post that follows it, where Kiernan says "Hold and below" in place of "Lo and behold", but I just love the quote.
Peace.
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