A conversation between E- and J-: Pleading the Fifth at Two

The following is a conversation initiated out of the blue by my 2-year-old son E- (who's lately been known to loudly demand to know "why you put me in trouble?!?" and to order us to "[not] talk to me again, ever!") with my wife J- one day after she got home from work:

E- (very seriously, as if honor-bound to tattle on me for an internationally recognized crime): Daddy yell, at me.

J-: Daddy yelled at you? Were you being naughty?

E- (mildly offended): I NOT, be... naughty.

J-: You weren't naughty? Then why was Daddy yelling at you?

E-: ...

E-: ...

E- (happily, aborting the plan and going for a distraction): I can jump, jump, jump around! I jump around your bed!

J-: Were you being naughty? Was that why Daddy was yelling at you?

E-: ... (runs from the room)

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You may enjoy my previous J- conversations, (2YO son) E- conversations, (9YO son) D- conversations, and (6YO daughter) M- conversations.

One-line movie reviews

I know how it sounds when I say it, but there's no other way: my kids watch almost no TV at all. (At least, not at our house.) However, rest assured, they do watch movies quite regularly. So by this stage they're all savvy enough to cut right through the verbose ramblings of old people like me, to create movie reviews for the Twitter generation.

For example:

It's a Wonderful Life (1946)
[About halfway through this, one of my favorite movies]
[9YO son] D- : This is definitely NOT a 'wonderful life'.
[6YO daughter] M-: Yeah, it's depressing!

The Tigger Movie (2000)
[2YO son] E- (disappointedly, throughout the movie): ...Where Pooh-bear go??

And I may as well include this post from the vaults, with another similarly pithy movie critique from D-, back when he was a mere 5-year-old: I think I've broken my kid (June 2009)

These less-than-effusive summaries are most notable just because as kids, their standards are so low that they seem to think any moving pictures put in front of them are "awesome".

It's a bit nauseating sometimes, when they (or worse yet, "we") are subjected to some terrible bit of would-be entertainment for any length of time, and they sit there clearly making no distinction between, say, an animated car insurance commercial and the finest creations during this, the Golden Age of Children's Movies.

Some day, I tell myself, they will appreciate what Pixar has wrought for them. Comments like these are the only real hints that I might live to see that day in person.

Things that amuse me, Vol. 17

Here are a few of the things that have been amusing me recently:

1. Almost every time* I log in to eBay lately (or when they send me a "tantalizing" daily e-mail trying to draw me back to their site), they suggest that I might be intensely interested in purchasing a scale model of Vin Diesel's head. No matter what I shop for. Do I have to break down and buy one just to make it go away? Is that their twisted strategy to move odd products after being listed for too long?

2. Only when your 6-year-old girl stays home from school do you get to find out exactly how lovely your 2-year-old son's head looks filled with many sparkly hair clips.

(Despite the look on his face in this picture, he couldn't be happier about the attention, or the accessorizing.)

3. I am astounded by the logic of a PR rep (for something I still haven't paid attention to, on principle**) who decided that I, like everyone else who received her e-mail, likely did not pay the proper amount of attention to it, so she forwarded it to everyone all over again within the span of a week.

Now, of course, such an annoying action is far from uncommon, and it results in many, many e-mails coming in to bloggers' inboxes every day, but where this lady goes beyond the call of duty is by including this explicit and cringe-inducing opening sentence in her followup: "I know you must get a million emails like this daily, so I wanted to resend and ensure you received the info below."

...Make that a million and one.

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* The rest of the time, it suggests an equally creepy "Jason Statham" head.

** See that? You got your wish, lady-- I'm writing about your e-mail!