Jake and I walked to the grocery store a few weeks ago. The list, administered by Amy, was simple:
- asparagus
- milk
- bread
- tomatoes
- PENIS!
The last piece was my contribution, if you couldn’t figure that out. Whenever Amy leaves a written list of anything lying around—eulogy notes, for example—I add PENIS! to it.
Back to our walk. I spent the first leg programming my boy.
Me: M-I-A-M-I
Jake: Fight! Fight! Fight!
Me: C-A-N-E-S
Jake: Canes!
Me: We got some Canes over here…
Jake: Woosh! Woosh!
Me: Good boy.
We entered Dominick’s.
“Wow! We go grocery store!” Jake said and exploded with curiosity. From his stroller, his little hands pointed everywhere.
“Wazat Daddy Davit?”
“That’s a Starbuck’s.”
“Wazat Daddy?”
“Cookies.”
“Jakey eat it?”
“No. You’ve got your pretzels.”
“Wazat?”
“That’s a scooter for people who can’t walk.”
“Man riding can’t walk?”
“That’s right.”
Jake turned to me and held out an opened hand. “How come man can’t walk?”
“I don’t know. It can be any number of reasons.”
His expression became more perplexed, bordering on concern.
I sighed. “Maybe he has Polio or diabetes. Or he fell off his roof.”
Jake pointed elsewhere. “Wazat?”
“Paper towels.”
“Wazat, Daddy Davit?”
“Tampons.”
I crossed everything off the list except for PENIS!, and we checked out at the self-service section. I put the groceries in the little basket under the stroller, and we walked outside into the hot, dense air.
For several minutes, Jake played with and gnawed at a box. I thought nothing of it, and kept going. A little later, I snapped out of my aloofness. What is that box? Where did it come from? Did Jake pull something out of the stroller basket?
I walked to the front of the stroller and saw that Jake was playing with a box of cake mix. Jake had stolen it.
I stole a pen from a gift shop in Marco Island when I was twelve. Jake shoplifted at two. The sun beat down on us. He looked at me with squinted eyes and smiled.
“Hi,” he said, and I laughed hard.
For the rest of the walk, I tried figuring out just how in the hell Jake so easily stole the box of cake mix. He must have simply and swiftly swiped the it from his stroller. Holy shit, the stealth!
Amy also laughed when I told her. It tired explaining the transgression to Jake.
“Jake, you stole something.”
“Jakey stole it,” he said with a wide smile.
“Stealing is illegal.”
Jake’s new affect is to laugh while talking. “Yeah-haha,” he said.
“I’m glad you think stealing is funny,” I said, not angry in the slightest.
“Stealing so so funny-hahaha.”
“You’re a thief.”
“Jakey feef-hahahaha.”
“How does that make you feel?”
He shrugged and smiled.
“You’re proud of this?”
“Ah ha.”
“You’re a proud thief.”
Jakey pwowed feef. Bake cake?”
“No. I think the right move is to return it.”
Amy brought it back, and her story drew laughter from the employees. Jake stayed home.
New marketing strategy? Email your visitors with new post alert? Nice, but if your site is called “Chocolate Diapers” you could’ve at least left me a chocolate on my pillow too. This post was interesting and ironic in that I was just thinking back to an incident that happened years ago with my brother. My mother had taken me and my brothers with her grocery shopping and when we left the store she discovered my brother had taken a pack of gum. I remember her bringing him back in to the store to confess to the manager and return it. He was mortified, and as I recall it was an accident. No harm, no foul. You need to do a post on “the eye”…know what that is? My mother never hit us because all she would need to do was give us “the eye” and that seared right through all the way to the gizzard. You knew she meant business and you wised up real quick.
Yeah, I added you to my email distribution list. Hope that’s okay.
I am trying to develop “the eye”, but it’s hard because I’ll glare at him, and then he’ll give me a completely disarming smile, and I laugh. Maybe I should just beat him instead.
::laughs hard:: You aren’t doing it right! Maybe my mother had some “place” she went to in order to garner “the eye”…surely it must have been in the bowels of Hell because it would send shivers through a person that could cut you at the knees.
BTW, I love that asparagus were on your list…my favorite! Did you know that asparagus are the only vegetable that is considered “proper” to eat with the fingers at even the most fanciest of dinners?
I have nothing to say about your son being raised a thief, but I will say that every time Jesse makes a list in the house that starts with “To do” I write my name on it.
Nice! I’m stealing your idea.
I did not know that. Did you know that asparagus makes everyone’s pee smell, but not everyone possesses the gene that makes them smell asparagus pee?
Yes, I did know that! It is a diuretic too. Doesn’t matter, throw a handful on my plate and drown it in hollandaise sauce and I don’t give a shit what my pee smells like!
I am reading this and I am your wife. I am in on the “joke”…ha!
So, send me a things to do list.
Did you realize that the ad above the comment box was to “date millionaire singles”? Do you think that’s a hint to me? Could be a way to get some extra dough so you can afford to blog for a living:)