'My Kids Made Me Do This'

I noticed, amidst a pile of about three-hundred-plus of these sort-of Pokeman/football/baseball/wizard trading cards the boys diligently make and cut out (I'll show some more someday, but, it might take a video and that's sorta, well, difficult... for me), this:

My child-to-adult decoder ring is on the fritz but I'll give it a go.  First let's read it as is.  I get:  hells one prison all life.  Bummer;  life's a bitch and then ya die, sorta feel, dont'cha think?

The ring says this reads:  'Heals one person all life.'  Well, there ya go, that seems nicer.

But, you know what has me really confused is this image:

Really?  What the hell is that?  A pharaoh with an adder-headed stick?  A happy-helmeted-healer?  A golfer in rain gear at the first hole?  Nostradamus, the younger years?  I thinks it's just a retired happy face from the seventies down on his luck and looking to make comeback.

So, it is funny and odd and a little creepy to share this, but, my hope is that this will remind them of the hours they spent creating and trading and complaining because no one will trade a real card for the hand made ones, and laughing and explaining and hoping and living they (N in this case) put into these.


In the little paragraph below the title, you know, right up at the top of this page, I wrote, well, that:  'My kids made me do this.'  Honestly, I meant I felt like I had to show you this because this stuff is just too damned funny and ridiculous not to share.

Now I am not so sure...

I guess I have been looking down more carefully, kicking through the piles of arbitritus a little more, scrutinizing the take-home-folders with a little added interest.  I wondered why this morning and I realized a shift from, "oh that's funny" to more of a "we all might really want to see this someday" sort of attitude.


This is from a Manners series Z has been working on for The Saturday Evening Post, you know, like the Virtues paintings dude did way back when, you may have heard of him, Norman Rockwell, I think.  Yeah, these are like those:

'Things not  to do at dinner:  Brp (burp) no;  hood, no.'  Well that's about all you need to know about table manners, right there.  Next: cell phone etiquette, it's a picture of a smart-phone dropping into a toilet.  (And, yes we do have an off-balance purple pedestal table.)


They will want to remember.  I desperately want to remember. I need to remember; they deserve to.

And, no, I am not making fun of the boys.  Honestly I find this stuff so cute that sometimes I have to delete whole paragraphs of loving tripe about innocence taught and innocence lost;  about inner beauty and the weight of the future; about the brilliance and cleverness they exude; about the love I have, right now, for who they are, the sadness I have for their, our, loss of childhood, the profound, sacred hopes I have for who they will become.


From Marci's '...things you don't expect to hear from the backseat...'

Oh, the deep conversations in our house ...

Daddy: "Nick, are you getting hungry?"
 
Nick: "Is it raining outside?"
 
How existential.


Are you thirsty?
Where do fans get the air...?