11-27-08

Sometimes the best entertainment is in the theater of your own home

Last week I promised my wife that I wasn’t going to write about our family for a little while. I agreed. I do write quite a bit about us.
However, I have to tell this one last story.
The other day, I came home from work and the house smelled of a dinner that I needed really bad, and Nash and Ethan were running around playing. Actually getting along. Quickly I stepped back out and checked the number on the house.
Leigh was working at the stove and my son was playing at his play cook stove pretending to cook his own meal. I stepped in and tended the pots and pans for a bit and Ethan kept on “cooking.” He would occasionally bring over a brightly colored plastic pot with a plastic turkey or plastic hot dog in it and ask me or Leigh to test it to see if it needed more salt or if it had to much garlic.
Where does he get this from? Oh. Us.
After a little while of playing this out, he got bored and upped the “playing” field. “I have a table for Leigh, Bryan and Nash. Your table is now ready,” Ethan announced.
Well, who couldn’t resist that. So we put the lids on our pots and pans, turned the temperature down on the real stove and walked over to have our wonderful plastic smorgasbord. I told Ethan that he was the best cook and that there was no need for Mommy and Daddy to even finish cooking dinner.
He disagreed.
After we finished our plastic meal and cleaned our plastic place setting, we went back to cooking our real meal.
Nash stuck around to chew and lick on all of the plastic food that she now found.
Ethan was being really nice and was trying to pull back anything that he didn’t want her to play with so that he could cook our plastic dessert. Nash started to get upset because she couldn’t have all of the newfound toys.
After a few minutes of them going back and forth, I noticed her pulling the entire stove and yelling at Ethan. I wasn’t sure how this was going to turn out but I figured they would work it out.
Her yelling and whining escalated into full on screaming.
Without missing a beat, I hear Ethan call out to Leigh and me, “Excuse me. You forgot your kid!”
I was telling my brother this story and he reminded me of another.
My nephew, Justin, was visiting with my mom and dad and was playing with a toy cash register he brought along. This toy had buttons, bells, a drawer that slid open and a little microphone that he could talk into.
My dad sat down to play with him for a few minutes.
”That will be $5.00 sir.” Justin said. Dad handed him a ten dollar bill from his wallet.
Justin responded with a “Thank you.”
Opening the drawer, he slid the bill in and closed the drawer back up. “Have a nice day, sir.”
“I need my change.” Dad retorted. Justin quickly replied, “Sir, you will have to come back tomorrow.”
Justin got up grabbed his toy cash register and began to leave the room.
“Justin, give me my money back.”
The little clerk quietly turned around, set down the register, leaned into the toy microphone and calmly said, “Security.”
Bryan Pinkey can be reached at bpinkey@nccox.com.