Big Daddy Paul

Malcolm is not a complicated person.  The are certain things in his life, like chocolate and talking about whether his poop will successfully flush down the toilet, that always make him happy.  He constantly craves mac ‘n cheese, regularly wants to watch Giants baseball games, and every I ask him to brush his teeth, he hides behind the bathroom door first.  He is, in almost every way, a creature of habit.

It is, then, quite surprising when we are out in the world and someone asks Malcolm a question about what he would like.  The truth is, I have no idea how he will answer.  Like a TV contestant who folds under the pressure, Malcolm responds to such queries by blurting out the first thing that comes to his mind.  When asked by the lady handing out balloons what color balloon and string he wanted, he said, "pink, and green." I almost snorted in disbelief, as he has told me about 500,000 times that his favorite colors and blue and brown. Pink and green don’t even go together, but he seemed to like the balloon nonetheless.

This trend is especially noticeable at the ice cream counter.  Malcolm spends most of his day figuring out how to get me to give him some chocolate, but when ordering ice cream he somehow forgets his obsession with the cocoa bean and orders flavors like lemon, strawberry, or, as he likes to call it, baneewa.  I try to point out to him all of the different flavors that have chocolate, but he adamantly insists that the simple flavors are what he wants. I feel a little sorry for him, but Malkie gets what Malkie wants, so I let him order by himself.

Sometimes, he does this when just introducing himself out in public.  When asked what his name is, he says, "I’m Malcolm and I am three and three quarters," or, "I’m Malcolm, I have a blue dog."  He recently told the librarian his age and added, for good measure that, "Pablo Sandoballs has a big belly."  Unsure if the librarian would understand just what this meant, he stuck out his belly, looked down at it, and then looked at the librarian as if to say, "See what a big belly looks like?"

Invariably, the inquisitor shoots me a look as if to confirm that what he just said is what he actually meant.  Occasionally, the look is more to wonder what the hell is wrong with the kid.  Most of the time I shrug my shoulders in an effort to convey my confusion as well, but sometimes I have his back.  I sneered right back at the balloon lady thinking, "Damn straight pink and green. My boy is a regular Salvador Dali !" 

I took Malcolm to his first Giants game as a fully functioning person yesterday.  He is really into the Giants and he can recite the roster by position (with the exception of part-time left fielder and second baseman Eugenio Velez, pronounced "Ay-Yu-Hen-eeo.")  I decided I hadn’t been to a Giants game in far too long, so when Amy suggested I took Malcolm to a day game, I leaped at the opportunity.

We had to stop at the nearby Safeway before the game, and we passed a big black dude in the aisle.  Malcolm took a look at him and asked, "Daddy, is that fat brown guy Pablo Dandoballs?"  I have grown accustomed to Malcolm making derogatory comments about strangers, so I handled this the usual way.  I sprinted away from him and muttered something like, "I think all the players are already in the dugout.  Let’s go find some sun screen!"

At the game, Malcolm was a gem! We watched around six innings of the game, and Malcolm made a good showing at the tot baseball diamond by slamming a whiffle ball off of a ball park employee’s knee.  During the game, I taught Malcolm to say, "Grab some pine, meat!" when the opposing player struck out.  The first time he was able to bust it out, he yelled, "Put some meat in my hand!"  After some coaching, he responded to a strikeout by yelling, "Grab some pie, matey!"  Not quite there yet, but we are making progress.

We thoroughly enjoyed the game, he sat in my lap most of the time so I could point out where the ball was heading.  Of course, this meant that he kicked the old woman sitting in front of us in the head a couple times.  I should have been more concerned, but at least he didn’t call her a dried up bag o’ bones. 

Malcolm has been acting strange at the park.  On Wednesdays, after dismal soccer practices, Malcolm and his friend, Samara, have been taking me and Samara’s dad, Luke, over to a small amphitheater, where they have begun singing musicals.  At first, they just sort of sang gibberish and marched around.  Luke and I seemed uninterested, staring off into space and, gasp, even talking to each other during the performance.  They realized that they needed production values and a theme for each musical.  So, they upped their game.

Their first real musical was about clams.  They had been digging around in an old creek and found some clam shells.  I do not know much about anything, so I said clams used to have feet and wandered around on land.  Luke shook his head and told them that this whole area used to be underwater and the clams lived in the bottom of the ocean then.  I concurred, although I secretly believe that my explanation is almost as plausible.  With props in hand, Malcolm and Samara marched around on stage clapping and singing the word "clam" and then any other word that rhymed with clam.  A typical verse went, "Clam, Clam, Clam. Clam got no hand. Clam in the Gam. Clam, Clam, Clam. Clam eat land. Clam in the pan, Clam stand."  We laughed pretty hard at this, causing the kids to start laughing and foaming at the mouth.  I took this as a sign that Malcolm was bitten by a dog when I wasn’t looking, but fortunately Luke told me that they were simply making the same frothy mouth that a clam makes when it is scared.  (Once again, I secretly believed my explanation until I got home and found no evidence of Malcolm being bitten by a bat.)

The next week, Malcolm and Samara invented a new musical.  It was all about stealing people’s hats.  They pranced about on stage like ponies singing "gonna steal your hat! Gonna steal your hat!" until they ran up into the seats and tried to steal my hat.  I picked up on some clues that this was about to happen, and so, luckily, they did not in fact steal my hat.  They kept trying, but I never let them actually get my hat.  After about ten minutes, I decided that this was the worst musical that I had ever seen.  I never thought I would say this, but I missed the clam song. 

My son is a talker. We used to think that he was kinda verbal. Now, we know that he is way past that. He has developed a nasty case of diarrhea of the mouth. (Sadly it is accompanied by, as my junior high science teacher used to say, constipation of the brain.)

Malcolm talks about poop. He talks about school. He talks about his “aminals.” And when he is done talking you about everything that he has to talk about, he talks to his aminals. Then he finds someone else to talk to. If he can’t find anyone else, he comes back to you and will try to talk to you about all the same stuff he has already talked to you about. The cycle then repeats, ad nauseum.

I used to think that I talked to Malcolm to pass the time away during the day. Now, I know that quite the opposite is true. He talks to me. I am not sure exactly where it comes from, but he loves hearing the sound of his own voice. Malcolm has lots of questions for the firefighters at birthday parties. He spends time at baseball practice telling his coach that his shoes are fast. He recently talked to my parents for 25 minutes on the phone telling them which of his aminals are mean and which are nice. Luckily, grandparents are insane enough and have enough free time to stay on the line that long.

So it all came down to this. We just spend a few days with our friends at the Russian River. We kayaked down the river one of the days, and after the long and tiring day we tried to unwind back at the house in the hot tub. Everyone had their head back, eyes closed, and nobody spoke. Then Malcolm got there. “Daddy, why are the dogs going poop?” he asked. He continued, “Daddy why do the dogs have so many legs? Why does the brown one’s tail not move? I think the brown one looks like cinnamon. Are there monsters in the trees? The night before this one, was there any monsters, then?” I told Malcolm that we were tired and wanted to relax, and asked him to be quiet. He paid no attention to that, and said that he wanted to play the train game. He was going to be blue again, because he likes blue, which is the color of his dog. I had to ask him again to be quiet and told him that if he wasn’t able to be quiet, he was going to have to get out of the hot tub. For a while, he whispered his string of unrelated nonsensical comments, but then when he didn’t get the response he was looking for, he continued ahead, full steam. “The day after next, I want to go to the river, and throw rocks for the dogs. I want to go in the boat, and look at the weeds. When is mommy coming? Is she at work? Why does she have the green car and we have the blue car. My dog is blue.” At this point we couldn’t stop laughing because it became apparent that Malcolm just couldn’t shut the fuck up. When we finally could take no more, I took Malcolm out of the hot tub. Not the worst problem you could draw up for a kid, but exhausting nonetheless.