Monday, July 30, 2007

Who Turned Three? Gideon Tyree!

If some spendthrifts want to fork over $2500 for 30 seconds with Michael Jackson, that’s their business. The time I spent with son Gideon at his third birthday party (watching him unwrap his “presnits”) was priceless.

Superman was the theme of the party, not surprisingly. For months, Gideon has been obsessed with super-heroes, rattling off names like Wolverine, Moon Knight, Batman, and Wonder Woman. During his shower last night Gideon revealed, “They call me a super-hero, because I hold the pipe (for the showerhead) while they’re rinsing me.” (Hey, people have become celebrities for less.)

Super-hero or not, the party was a celebration of what a remarkable young man Gideon has become in the past year. He loves books (he throws a fit when we turn off the light at bedtime and he can’t “read”), displays showmanship (waving his arms and announcing, “We’re going to have a grand adventure!”), has a vivid imagination (he has learned to “make movies” by closing his eyes, and regales us with dreams about “happy skeletons working in their workshop”), shows an understanding of adult motivations (“You tease me because you love me”), and adapts the speed of saying grace according to whether something good is on TV. (I wonder if this would work for sermons? “Hey, preacher, if you don’t want to miss Scooby Doo unmasking the culprit, you’d better cut it to Six Deadly Sins.”)

He has also shown an egalitarian view that the rules should apply to everyone equally. When the librarian told him that he had entered a restricted area, he responded with “Shhhhhhh!”

Gideon has become adept at bluffing to cover some shortfall of knowledge. I can ask him if he knows the meaning of a certain word. He answers, “Uh huh. (Pause) Tell me.” One night at bedtime he kept answering all my questions with grunts. When I asked, “Gideon, what has become of your vocabulary tonight?,” he got a deer-in-the-headlights look and whimpered, “I put it SOMEWHERE.”

I showed Gideon a photo of a 1970 Webelos Scout campout that “Daddy and Uncle Dwight” attended. He immediately chimed in with, “I was there. I helped you.” Forget astronaut or cowboy – this credit hog is cut out to work in an office someday.

Gideon recently decided to rename his big doll “Belly Button.” He then announced, “I have three sons: Belly Button, Barbie, and Ken.” Where is Sigmund Freud when you need him?

“I’m behaving NOW,” has become one of Gideon’s most-repeated phrases. I think that’s what Saddam Hussein said when dragged out of that hole in the ground.

I often find myself gazing down in awe at this sweet, innocent child. If he ever did pursue a life of crime, he would probably be the first prisoner to somehow lose a shoe while in solitary confinement.

The night before Gideon’s birthday, I remarked, “You’re growing up so fast. You’ll be in school before you know it.” He beamed, “Then I will teach you things instead of you teaching me.”

As Louis Armstrong sang, “You will learn much more/ than I will ever know/And I think to myself/What a wonderful world!”

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