Crib View

If this is the "view" from the place I am mostly in, I would be crying too !! 

Whose Line Is It Anyway ? - #18

My son, in recent days, is really obsessed with calendar, dates, time etc. The concept of AM and PM was not up to his liking though - particularly when he came to know say 7pm is night while 3pm is not. He put forward his plan for clearing the confusion - "It should be AM for day, BM for afternoon, CM for evening and DM for night."  Any takers, people ?

We know our son used to systematically test us for our weaknesses to get his way through. This one day he decided to play the "sympathy" card when we were crossing a Starbucks outlet. He has a thing for its cookies. With a nonchalant expression, he started  "Amma, if you want to be nice to me, you can get me something to eat in Starbucks". My wife was not to fall for his trick this time, she said "I have always been nice to you". He still did not want to miss the beat  "Okay then, If you feel like I should be eating something, you can get me something from there".  No worries pal !

As always, our son who is  a constant source of entertainment started a conversation with me.  He asked " appa, does a pilot earn more than an engineer?" I said "I don't think so".  I could still see his processor  working hard.  I was eagerly waiting for the next question.  So the next question followed " appa, does an astronaut earn more than an engineer".  Now I knew where it was all going and where it came from( My wife had had a talk with him about how being attentive in the class helps people later in their lives etc etc. yep ! she gets his processor working and he starts shooting questions. Now he knew that astronaut do make good money. so I could see him  interested. I told him "if u want, i could take u to NASA one day and u can see the space ship". He seems convinced but wasn't quite sure. Then out came his biggest concern of all - "Appa, if I got out on a space ship will you or amma be coming with me. If its my first time in space ship, they should allow parents right ?". That's the 5yr old mind inside the small aspiring astronaut doing the talk. I emphatically said, "If you become an astronaut, I will definitely come with you on the space ship".  Life seemed good atleast for the moment for the astronaut-wannabe. 

Today's blog pic is a truck/automobile he built with his legos without any blue print.

Disarming Innocence

I was driving my son to his school today.  A car in front of us switched lanes without checking the oncoming traffic in that lane. This caused a pickup truck in that lane to suddenly brake for this car to avoid collision. The truck driver let out his anger with a loud honk for the car which cut his vehicle abruptly.  I laughed on hearing his honking.

My son noticed my laughter but was not aware of the traffic scene I just saw. He asked why I laughed. I told him that a truck driver got mad because a car cut him abruptly and that he had to brake hard and hence was mad and honked.  Without missing a beat, he asked " so what is funny about it ?"

I was taken by surprise as I did not expect this question from him. For a while, I was desperately searching for words on how to answer this seemingly plain question. In the first place, I had actually laughed at the trouble of a couple of unknown people driving near me. Though harmless, frankly speaking, it was an insensitive reaction on my part. Instead of even thinking about what could have happened if they collided, all I could muster was a indifferent sadistic laughter. Agree that its not the end of the world, just a minor thing, that's how world is etc etc. But the very fact that my son's innocent mind did not find it funny while I laughed at it, made me cringe as I reflected upon how my mind has stooped low enough to elicit a laughter out of such things. Even after a couple of minutes, I couldn't come up with a convincing explanation and in fact, I did not want to explain why I laughed - for two reasons - one, I felt bad about myself and two, I did not want to curb his innocence. I just kept on driving.

Snow flakes and rain drops are often used to emphasize purity or innocence. Incidentally, it was raining today when I was driving him to school. I was still contemplating on the incident when I shot the attached pic of rain drops.