Weekend Silent Sampler

I took this picture as evidence sometimes The Fonz doesn't talk.

On Wednesday Optimist Prime took a vow of silence. He was reading a book about a girl with disabilities who couldn’t speak and he wanted to understand what that was like. I wonder if the girl in the story had a little brother like The Fonz who begged her to talk the entire time. If we had to pick one of our two sons to take a vow of silence, I’m not saying whom we’d choose, but it wouldn’t be OP. We couldn’t understand why The Fonz wanted OP to speak so badly since he usually does 90% of the talking at our house. You’d think he’d appreciate a slight decrease in competition, but I guess he appreciates an occasional ‘Yup’ or ‘Uh-huh’ from OP as confirmation his audience is still awake.

The Fonz kept writing notes to OP, begging him to speak. Eventually he wrote my wife a note reading:

Nobody listens to me. Nobody cares about me.

My wife smelled a scheme and asked, “Is that how you really feel?”

He wrote:

Nobody likes me. I’d feel better if somebody gave me $20.

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When we flew to South Korea, Korean Airlines gave both our sons a plush toy airplane. It’s been a while since either of them played with a stuffed animal, and they may have forgotten how dangerous plush toys can be; that’s why I was grateful the back of the package included these cautions:

I think the caution is suggesting a connection between the lines ‘Do not bind out the string on the finger’ and ‘It will cause unexpected blood circulation interruption,’ but I can’t be sure. Is it possible the lines aren’t connected and the caution is guaranteeing the toy will automatically cause ‘unexpected blood circulation interruption’? If that’s the case, I say no thanks. Sure, kids can be difficult on a plane, but cutting off their blood circulation is probably too far.

The boys can find a way to make just about any toy ‘violent and rough’ or run their toys ‘into an other people or live animal,’ so these warnings were appreciated.

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It’s been said comedy is tragedy plus time. Perhaps consideration of this definition is what makes me feel so guilty about finding comedy in the story of that Italian captain even though the tragedy is still unfolding.

In Thursday’s post I listed his comedy of errors, culminating in his claim that he tripped and fell into a lifeboat and had no way of getting back onto the ship. Since that time it has also been reported he may have continued dining with a female friend in the moments after the crash, he instructed his crew to lie to the Coast Guard and insist the problems were only electrical for the first thirty minutes, and then after he tripped into a lifeboat and rowed ashore after the evacuation had only just begun, he called a taxi and left. It’s like he’s trying out for broad comedy villain in a James Bond parody.

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One day left to vote in the caption contest. If you don’t vote in the caption contest, it’s kind of like saying you disagree with democracy.