Weekend Round-up

Our ten-year-old son, Optimist Prime, doesn’t get near as many mentions as The Fonz because he’s probably the most polite, positive person I know and rarely does me the favor of getting in trouble to provide material for this blog. This week a teacher told my wife he had approached Optimist Prime and told him, “You know everyone around here thinks you’re a real special kid.”
And Optimist Prime replied, “Thanks. You know everyone around here thinks you’re a real special teacher.”
The teacher told my wife, “That kid is going to be a senator some day. He always knows the right thing to say.”

The Fonz overheard this story and asked, “How come nobody ever says those kinds of things about me?”
I told him, “I think people say you’re more likely to blackmail a senator some day.”
He asked me what blackmail meant and as I explained I could see the wheels of possibility turning.

…..

The Fonz got in trouble this week and we asked him to choose a punishment he thought would be appropriate. He thought about it a moment before answering, “No video games for a week?”
“But we almost never let you play video games. You haven’t played video games at home in months.”
He shrugged, “That’s why I thought of it.”

We made him clean his room.  And dust and polish the video games.

…..

Dear Vacation,

I miss you. It’s cold and rainy here in Shanghai. Home doesn’t understand me like you do and makes me wake up when it’s still dark outside. Sometimes I lock myself in the bathroom and admire my tan in the mirror and it makes me think of you. On Tuesday I found some of your sand in my ear, you minx.

Hope to see you again some place warm before too long.

All the Best,

Greatsby

…..

A new girl arrived in the second grade after Christmas break. Her arrival seems to have coincided with The Fonz asking me a lot of questions about girls and what age people start dating. He also asked how old I was the first time I kissed a girl. I decided I didn’t want to go into details and answered, “It’s kind of hard to remember the first time I kissed a girl because I spent so much time practicing kissing the mirror. I get the dates I first kissed a girl and first kissed a mirror mixed up.”
“You kissed a mirror?”
“Sure. All the time.”
“So you went up to the mirror and said, ‘I had a real nice time tonight,’ and then you walked to the other side of the mirror and said, ‘I had a real nice time, too’?”

Looking back, I wish it had been that romantic.  That mirror never even called me.

…..

The caption contest finalists will be posted tomorrow. The next post will be on Monday.