Toadie

Sully and I were walking home from the park this morning when he stopped, crouched, and pointed at the ground. He was excited.

"I think I see A TOADIE HOLE!"

I said, "A what?"

and he said, "A TOADIE HOLE! TOADIES LIVE IN THOSE!"

I said, "What's a Toadie?"

He was still crouched over the hole, which probably belonged to a gopher, but he looked up at me with a big smile on his face. "Well," he said, because that's how he begins most of his sentences these days because, honestly, that's how I begin most of my sentences when I'm talking to him. He made big gestures with his little arms as he spoke. "A Toadie  has mouth-es but no eyes. It has cheeks and arms and legs and all those things. And it lives in a very, veeeery, very-very small hole. I saw one."

I always treat these conversations carefully, like I'm a conversation archaeologist. I can tell there's more in there, that he's thought about this at length, but if I ask the wrong question he'll just shut down.

Like, one time he was telling me a story about his imaginary friend, Raligi, and I asked him a leading question and he just stared at me, suspiciously, like he understood that I was mining the conversation for gold to send to his grandparents in a text message later that afternoon, which I was, because I learned from Art Linkletter exactly how to make Kids Say the Darndest Things, and he said, "I'm not talking about Raligi anymore."

So, you know, I have to be careful.

I looked away from him, indicating a moderate level of interest in the conversation, and said, "What did it do?"

"It jumped out of the hole!" he cried. "It poked me in the eyes! It gave me lots of money to buy toys with!"

I wondered how it knew where his eyes were if it didn't have eyes itself. I wondered if it poked him in the eyes because it didn't have any eyes of its own—and was this a matter of jealousy? Resentment? Or just curiosity? "How big was it?" I asked, still trying to play it cool.

"It was like a big man," he said. "But a really, reeeeally big man."

"But if it was like a big man, how did it get down into that veeeeery small hole?"

"It used the stairs. I'm not going to talk about Toadie anymore."

The Poop

It's Sunday night. We got home from a picnic in the park about half an hour ago and Sully's sleeping already. Barclay and I are sitting on the couch staring over each others' shoulders at the walls. I could go to bed right now and fall asleep instantly, but it's a matter of principle for me to pretend like I'm a night owl at all times.

I'm not thirty yet! I'm a spring chicken! I'm going to crank The Beta Band and stay up until 10:15!

Barclay's like, "I could go to bed right now and fall asleep instantly."

I'm like, "It's only 8. We're young. Lets live it up."

He's like, "Well, what are you going to do?"

And I'm like, "I'm going to read this book."

So he gets out his guitar and I curl up on the couch with my headphones and a latte and Funny Girl by Nick Hornby. I read three paragraphs. I'm totally into the story, but all of a sudden I'm not reading anymore, just staring out the open window at the quiet street in front of my house. The sky is peach. The breeze is warm. The car is parked out there and it has bird poop on the hood.

Sully is completely fascinated by the poop. We were coming out of the grocery store yesterday and he saw it and he gasped and gaped and pointed at it; he thought it was paint. I told him what it was.

He can't get over it.

It's just the most ludicrous thing to him that a living thing would poop on our car. In public. He kept asking me to verify that the offending bird did, indeed, poop on our car in a parking lot in front of everyone. Unbelievable!

And not only that: The Poop is white. White poop. What will they think of next? "Mom!" he said to me as I was tucking him into bed last night. "Birds have white poop! Do you know why?"

And I admitted that I didn't.

And he said, in a voice barely above a whisper, "Because that's what's in their butts. White poop." He said it with all the awe and innocent amazement you could hope for.

Children are wonderful.

Anyway. I don't think I'm going to last until 10:15, Beta Band or no Beta Band. I do turn 30 later this month; maybe the effects of aging aren't constrained to a certain day?