Velcrometer
Throwing stuff at the internet to see what sticks
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M. Giant's Velcrometer Throwing stuff at the internet to see what sticks |
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Thursday, December 03, 2009 Story Time A couple of weeks ago, Trash went out of town for the weekend, leaving M. Edium and me doing the bachelor thing again.  This time we decided to make a little road trip. My mom had read that they have a T. Rex skeleton at a museum in St. Cloud, a little over an hour northwest of here. So we made a day of it. I packed us a lunch and everything. Of course, on the way up there I saw a restaurant in Albertville called Space Aliens Grill and Bar, so obviously packing a lunch had been a waste of time. After the museum, where the sight of a complete, full-sized skeleton triggered nightmare flashbacks for me (you can't fault the model for accuracy, at least) and a visit to the playroom resulted in M. Edium bonding with Krazy-Glue speed to a 7-foot stuffed caterpillar (Melissa & Doug, no longer available, and believe me I looked), we started the trek back home, as excited about lunch as anything else we had planned for the day. I was expecting the place to be a chaotic zoo like the Pizza Planet restaurant from Toy Story, but it's actually more upscale than that. The birthday parties were tucked back into a side room and the game room is way in the back, so it's possible to actually walk across the place without getting kindergartners in your sneaker treads. The food is standard Applebee's, but with sci-fi names for stuff and French fries that come in an antigravity cone (which is actually held upright with a wire rack). Speaking of the game room, M. Edium kind of cleaned up back there. It's the kind where all the games feed out tickets depending on how well you do, thus serving the vital function of being Junior's introduction to legalized gambling. Then you can exchange the tickets for stuff in the glass case by the front door. I hadn't given M. Edium that many coins for the games, so the number of tickets he had fell far short of what would have been required for, say, an original 1977 metal Star Wars lunch box with thermos. What he could afford was a cheap little spiral notebook with an alien's head printed on the cover. Three of them, in fact. He wanted to use them to write stories. And later, after we'd done everything we planned to do that day and more, we were on our way to the grocery store for one last errand. He busily sat in the back the whole way, composing his tale word by word under the dome light. When we got there, he asked me to wait a minute. The story was not finished yet (which meant some of the ten or so miniature pages hadn't quite been filled), but that didn't take much longer. Then, at bedtime, the story he'd written was among the ones I read him to help him get to sleep. Now, I'm not going to post the story here, because I don't have permission, but here's a short excerpt: Mom mom dad mom cats dad He's got two blank notebooks left, but doesn't seem in much of a hurry to follow up with a sophomore effort. Which is understandable. One needs to give the creative batteries time to replenish. I'm so proud that he wanted to take a crack at what he sees his dad doing all the time, and coming up with a first draft that was better than most of mine to boot. Trash was proud, too, and sorry she missed it (although she read the story to him at bedtime the next night when she got home). She didn't even feel bad that M. Edium had emulated my career before taking a shot at hers. I kind of wish he would soon, though. A lot of our paperbacks could use a little sorting and cataloguing. posted by M. Giant 3:29 PM 3 comments 3 Comments:Make sure you hold onto his earliest efforts. My parents kept EVERYTHING, beginning with a story about bunnies, which I wrote (and illustrated!) in kindergarten. It's made lovely blackmail material, since they drag it out whenever possible. I plan to do the same thing to my kids.
By I am jealous. I always wanted a relationship with my dad like you have with M. Edium. I hope it lasts when he becomes a teen.
By
this caterpillar?
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