“What does a Nietzschean mother hope for her son when she names him Genghis Stalin?” – Trance, Andromeda

The Boy and I picked these out. Actually, The Boy picked out gum. I picked these out. No attention span.

In the winter we kick The Boy downstairs to jump on his trampoline, to keep the noise down, and we figure the residual heat he generates warms the basement a tad. That’s been interesting. He’s gone through box after box in the basement and now has the most complete mental inventory of the house of anyone living here.

The Boy knows where everything is, probably due to the fact that if it’s been there six months, it’s been there for 10% of his life, and you tend to recall the things that have been there for that long. He also has the uncanny knack to find the exact object I’m looking for and bring it to me even before I’ve vocalized that I’m looking for it. The Boy had pulled the copy of Word© upstairs a few weeks ago, and got it out last night.

The Boy said to me: “You’ll need this soon,” and walked off.

Tonight The Mrs. asked when I was going to install Microsoft® Word™ on our other computer.

It’s like living with a three-foot psychic.

I however, am lucky if I can find my car keys. I went to the kitchen the other day and asked The Mrs., “Where’s the cheese slicer?”

She turned to me and asked, “Have you even looked or are you just asking?”

She had me there, but I attempted to not appear weak. “Umm, it’s not on the counter.”

She sighed. “Look in the dishwasher,” and went back to the work she was doing.

Oh, I said to myself. Washing things. Never would have caught that one. She’s sneaky.

Yesterday, The Boy and I went out looking for things for The Mrs. for Mother’s Day. We settled on:

• some flowers,
• a card,
• army boots (The Boy insisted),
  
• a picture frame for a collage of pictures of The Boy and The New Boy, and,
• a t-shirt.

The downside of this operation was that I had given The Mrs. a collage for Mother’s Day last year. She liked it a lot. So, I figured that would be a good repeat.

As we were driving to get a present for her mother, I suggested we do a repeat of what we did last year for her since it worked so well. The Mrs. responded, “Oh, you can’t do that. You have to do something new.”

From my stricken expression she could see what I had done.

“Oh,” The Mrs. continued, “I meant a woman couldn’t do that. It’s okay when a guy does that.”

So, last year I got an A+ for Mother’s Day presents. This year, well, a shaky B. Where was The Boy when I needed psychic divination of just what the heck to get The Mrs. for Mother’s Day?


The Boy's idea of a really fantastic Mother's Day gift.

(For the record, The Boy suggested I get The Mrs. a coffee mug that said, “Alaska” and had a picture of a moose, a clock surrounded by plastic moose, golf balls {she doesn’t golf} with “Alaska” on one side and pictures of moose on the other, and a magnetic sign that said, “Moose Crossing.” He was no help.)