True Form: Cursive Arithmatic

A little boy was doing his math homework. He said to himself, "Two plus five, that son of a bitch is seven. Three plus six, that son of a bitch is nine."
His mother heard what he was saying and gasped "What are you doing?"
The little boy answered "I'm doing my math homework, Mom."
"And this is how your teacher taught you to do it?" the mother asked.
"Yes", he answered. Infuriated, the mother asked the teacher the next day, "What are you teaching my son in math?"
The teacher replied, "Right now, we are learning addition."
The mother asked, "And are you teaching them to say two plus two, that son of a bitch is four?"
After the teacher stopped laughing, she answered, "What I taught them was, two plus two, THE SUM OF WHICH, is four."

A small boy is sent to bed by his father. Five minutes later.... "Da-d...."
"What?"
"I'm thirsty. Can you bring a drink of water?"
"No. You had your chance. Lights out."
Five minutes later: "Da-aaaad....."
"WHAT?"
"I'm THIRSTY. Can I have a drink of water??"
"I told you NO! If you ask again, I'll have to spank you!!"
Five minutes later......"Daaaa-aaaad....."
"WHAT!"
"When you come in to spank me, can you bring a drink of water?"

True Form : Topical Solutions

So Michael Jackson is innocent again. Whatever.
And Mike Tyson is an exemplary sportsman, Bill Clinton never had sexual relations with that woman and OJ is going to find the _real_ killers.

I was discussing our personal verdicts with my wife the other day. She thinks it's best to stay away from passing those kind of judgements on anyone. That's her catholic schoolgirl upbringing I guess. It's a little disturbing that she is right _so_ often. But she does have that adorable little streak in her. The one that breeds an innocent mischeif.
She encapsulated her opinion diplomatically by saying if she were in a situation where she had a choice of whether or not to leave our children with Michael for even a few minutes, she would favor the stongest part of "no fuckin' way" without even a second thought.

Me, I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt. Half of me says Michael is still a child. His Peter Pan complex is severely enabled by his obscenely rich and disconnected decision making psyche. He believes he's 'loving' the children...innocently 'loving' minors. Alone. In bed and in multiple other compromising and damaging scenarios. The other half says that he is extremely ill and needs to be reeled in a little bit because even a challenged child would have the sense to avoid the types of opportunities extorting pre-teen boys are ingenius enough to exploit into multi-million dollar settlements. I admitted that I was torn.

At that moment, my 3 year old son, who had been playing with his toys on the floor in front of us, blurts out "Mommy, I know what Michael Jackson says!"

"What does he say?" We had no idea that he had been listening in but apparently he wanted to submit his knowledge on the topic.

He says "Beat it. Michael Jackson says beat it."

We laughed and agreed.

True Form : Congenital Swahili

When my children reached the age where they could actually communicated with something other than crying, they made memory after memory with their own dialect of the Spanglish being taught to them.

Merry Christmas was 'Happy Kikabo'
Santa Clause was 'Kia Kah'
and Christmas lights were called 'Kika Light'
One of the most difficult to decipher was a loud proclamation by my daughter. She would throw her hands in the air and yell 'Peetoppio!'. We eventually learned that she was calling out for Pinnochio like Geppetto did in the feature animated film.

Eventually, I was able to trace the origin of their accents to a small tribe in early 19th century Africa. The nuances of the dialect were earmarked by distinct letter replacements throughout a modern day English vocabulary. To throw us off the scent, it sounded as if it were rushed through a swahili translator.

It became evident that we had taken our children's common sense for granted. We had made the mistake of assuming that they were aware of the country in which they were born and that the primary language in the USA is indeed English. This moment was defined by my daughter. She announced from the backseat of the car that she could see the ocean from her carseat in the backseat. Since the ocean was nowhere within the scope of the vehicle, we had to ask her where she saw the ocean. She pointed to the sky.
Her understanding of what the ocean was had somehow registered in the impressionable connections of her mind as the sky ...or any large area of blue for all we could assum at that point.

We shouldn't have been surprised. My parent's can barely understand my language to this day.

True Form: Coming Clean

"I can't clean my room, I'll get tired!"
This came from the innocent mouth of my 5 year old girl. This type of statement would have me dropping my shoulders, exhaling all of the air from my lungs while my eye roll up to find the patience to deal with this obvious issue.
"Well, what can I say to that, it makes me tired just looking at this mess. We've talked about this before sweetheart. You have to learn to put your toys away when you are done with them."
"But I'm never done with them."
"..." my mind raced for a response to this unfortunate dilemma. That was a good answer.
"Well, what about this stuff?" I flipped my foot at the lose scraps of construction paper, a mass of knotted yarn in various colors, some loose beads, 2 popsicle sticks and a smattering of balloon shaped confetti that was strewn around the floor of her room. The room that I tediously painted sky blue from about hip height to the ceiling. The bottom portion painted as fluffy clouds. From the clouds and to the ceiling as well were the larger than life, hand-painted Mickey and Minnie that stood on each side of her bed. Two birds from Cinderella on the far wall and intentionally crooked cartoon window frames around each window of the room. Glow in the dark star stickers filled the ceiling and portions of the walls. It was a masterpiece and _it_ made me tired. So tired in fact, that I wasn't about to allow it to be a part of the 'non-viewing' area of our home. The areas where guests were detoured away from so that they couldn't judge us on our housekeeping. So I brought up all the work I did on those walls...or was about to when she said:
"Daddy, those are arts and craps"
"???...Yes...yes, they are. And that's a problem because, where it is right now, it actually looks like artsy crap on your floor." Of course that's where I was given back my '???'
So she countered once again "erm....I can't clean my room because I don't know how."
Again, fair enough "Well, what _do_ you know how to do?"
"I can...make my bed" At least she admitted she was capable of _something_.
So I thought about it for a moment, I put everything that was on the floor up on the bed, dusted my hands off, and told her to make her bed.
Then I walked out of the room.