"Judas Priest on a pony!" - Sheriff Roscoe P. Coltrane, The Dukes of Hazzard

 

Pugsley stairs at a mannequin that will never, ever, ever manage to land the big one at our trip to the local Bass Pro Shop©. I think that between the things The Boy wanted, and the things I wanted, we could have spent $575,321. Thankfully The Mrs. was there to keep us from spending my nursing-home money away.

It started innocently enough.

“I want to dance. Dance for about two hours,” The Boy said.

“Later,” was my response. I can understand the impulse to cavort wildly in the air-conditioned haven that is Casa Wilder, but, frankly on a Friday night after a week of work, I was not inclined to dance. Rather, I felt a much more rational response was to melt into a puddle of lethargy.

Not fair to The Boy and Pugsley, I decided, since I had spent upwards of seventeen minutes with them during the past week. “Okay, let’s go swimming.”

The Mrs. demurred. “I swim with those little hairy men every day. You go.”

We did. The Boy (having just seen the film Master and Commander, about a ship during the Napoleonic era shooting Frenchmen as part of his self-imposed summer curriculum of learning about times around the Revolutionary War) wanted to re-Christen our pool raft the H.M.S. Syren. So we could capture French pool invaders, perhaps?

Pugsley also determined that it is very, very scary to capsize off of your swim ring and have nothing between you and sinking being your natural buoyancy, your panic, and your father’s good will.

After swimming, it was time for Pugsley to head to bed. The Mrs. put on a set of headphones and worked on building an imaginary railroad empire in 19th century Britain while The Boy repeated his request.

“I want to dance.”

Me? I was plumbing the Internet for information related to various types of flightless waterfowl. No, not interested in them, just ended up at that page.

Anyhow, The Boy kept pestering me.

Finally I relented, and put on some music, some vintage 1980’s Judas Priest®. The Boy appeared to feel that, indeed, that if I chipped away at his brain that I would, indeed, have another thing coming. Another thing coming.

I bought a DVD on amazon some time ago of a Judas Priest© concert, so I thought I’d spin that up for him.

“Do you like this,” I asked, as two sweaty, leather-clad, long-haired guitarists (okay, I actually know their names, K.K. Downing and Glen Tipton) flipped solos back and forth between them.

“Oh, yes,” said The Boy.

A little later he made the devil horn (or, hook ‘em horns, if you’re a UT grad) sign with his hand.

“What does this mean, Dad?”

“Rock on, little dude, rock on.”

So The Boy danced to all manner of 1980’s metal as I learned that the flightless cormorant is a bird that I cannot even spell without Spellcheck® and, shockingly, the Internet informed me that gas is expensive.

Maybe he’d like Iron Maiden©?