One dollar - the untellable story

Once again I am back, the turmoil of life having started to abate.  We moved to a new house, in a new city, in a new state, and started new jobs, and the Hatchling started school, and I had an enormous mechanical claw grafted to my spine which appears to have developed a habit of shoplifting fruit.

So I thought to myself tonight - "Self," I thought, "- Self, why not do a bit of blogging?"  So I opened up one of my old notebooks where I keep ideas and found this one:

One Dollar

"Hey! Come back you bitch!"

Clearly at the time I wrote this I was under the impression that this would remind me of some sort of concrete event or thought, but sadly this is not the case.  I have no idea whatsoever what I might have been thinking of writing.  Sorry you. Sorry self. Sorry bitch.  Your tale remains untold.

However, in the interests of not entirely wasting your time, here's a segue .., see if you can figure out the theme:

Last week we went out to dinner to a fancy-schpanzy restaurant with some old friends.  I came out of the bedroom wearing a tweed jacket, because old people dig that kind of shit.  The Hatchling looked at me and said, "Hey! Come back you bitch!"

No, of course she did not.  She actually said, "Dadda, you look very curious." I thought she meant that I looked odd or peculiar so I did my best offended act and instructed her to clarify herself, to which replied, "You look like you are going to solve a mystery!"

Comic road kill

Knock knock.

Who's there?

Cow.

Cow who?

What did the cow find when it crossed the road?

I don't know, what?

This joke.

Much safer

Hatchling

What is a war?

PTR

A war is what happens when army people from two different lands get together and fight each other, usually because they are having an argument about something.

Hatchling

So they fight with swords?

PTR

In the Olden Days they fought with swords, but now they use guns.

Hatchling

That is good, because swords are very pointy and you might accidentally hurt someone.

Custodian

Hatchling

I really really like your watch.

PTR

Me too.

Hatchling

When you are dead, who will get to have your watch?

PTR

You will, I suppose.

Hatchling

I can't wait! I can't wait!

Nothing beats fish-fingers

Rock-paper-scissors is a good game to play with a four-year-old.  It's simple enough to remember when you're exhausted, yet also boundlessly entertaining enough to keep them occupied trying to outsmart you.  But it's just not good enough for some.

Probably the best known rock-paper-scissors extension is rock-paper-scissors-Spock-lizard, as illustrated below.  It's tolerably amusing, I suppose, if you happened to be trapped in a broken subway with four (other) sweaty nerds.

Tonight while playing rock-paper-scissors with the Hatchling during dinner, she was riding high on a string of 5 successive victories, when she suddenly innovated.  My Smaller Half had played scissors - the Hatchling played a single extended finger.

"What's that? A sword?", I asked.
"No, a fish finger!", she said.
"Okay. So how does it work? What does the fish finger beat?"
"The goldfish", she replied, waving her flat hand held vertically, rather than horizontally as in paper.
"Right. And what does the goldfish beat?"
"Fish food!", she said, forming an inverted cup with her fingers pointing downward to the table.
"Okay, and what does the fish food beat?"
"Nothing!"
"What? There's not much incentive to play that then.  Does anything beat the fish finger?"
"No."

A pretty bizarre variant - it's basically two parallel games.  Rock-paper-scissors runs independently and as normal in its cyclical structure. And from time to time you can, if you wish, go skewing off into the fourth dimension and play the other fishfinger-goldfish-fishfood game, which is strictly hierarchical and entirely lacking in strategy of any kind.  Basically if you're playing this game the fish-fingers stretch out in front of you to infinity unless you decide for some reason to deliberately throw the game by playing goldfish or fish-food.

As for what happens if there is cross-over between the two games, at this stage the science is unclear.  Does fish-food beat paper? Do scissors beat gold-fish? I'd suggest treading carefully until the full ramifications have been worked out by the experts.

Nevertheless, as mentioned above, rock-paper-scissors-fishfinger-goldfish-fish-food captures some essential truths about life:

• it's repetitive,
• you cannot win, unless your enemy chooses to lose,
• you don't want to be fish food,
• nothing beats fish-fingers.

I think this is going to catch on and be a Big Thing.  Might get some t-shirts printed.  

But remember kids - don't play for money.

Who's on first?

We went to church this morning.

Which is to say, we went to a wedding, which was held at a church.  It was an Anglican service, so it struck me as bizarrely formal and packed with arcane regalia.  God help me if I ever go back in a Catholic church.

It was an unusual wedding.  The bride was an Anglican deacon.  And so was the bridegroom.  (And what's with that terminology?  Isn't a groom someone who brushes horses?) So there's probably an Abbott and Costello routine in there where the groom argues with the priest later on:
"I married my wife a year ago today."
"No, I married your wife. And you."
Hmm, perhaps not.

I worked a late shift last night so I was pretty wrecked.  During one of the many moments of religious contemplation, I closed my eyes and had a little quiet time.  Unfortunately for me, the Hatchling was sitting next to me, with an eagle-eye for detail.

"Dad!  WAKE UP!"

Made me feel so disreputable.

I am, you are, we are Australian

The Hatchling valiantly did her best to get me to chuck a sickie today and stay home to play Lego with her.  I won't pretend I wasn't tempted.

Hatchling

I don't want you to go to work today.

PTR

I know, but I have to go. There will be sick people who need my help.

Hatchling

I have an idea! You could call them and tell them that the other doctors will see them instead of you!

PTR

Yes! Err, I mean, that would be unfair on the other doctors. Sigh.

Still, coming up on Anzac Day as we are, I really think she's demonstrating what being an Aussie is all about!  So proud right now!

And I'd like to mention a devious idea I had today - it occurred to me that if I were to get to work half an hour early, the other people on my shift would see me working hard when they got there and assume that I was on the early shift.  Then when the early shift left, I could stick around for another half hour tidying up loose ends then piss off home early myself.  I won't pretend I wasn't tempted.  So proud right now!

Polysyllabic

Hatchling

Dadda, "eight" rhymes with "great"!

PTR

And "date".

Hatchling

And "gate"

PTR

And "ablate".

Hatchling

And "rescuscitate".

PTR

!!!

Science

Hatchling

Mama, do you know how to make science?

Smaller Half

How to make science? No, tell me.

Hatchling

You need, you need, vinegar! And bottle poda. And green colouring.

Smaller Half

Bottle poda?

Hatchling

Yes. And you put them all in, and it goes up, up, up and all over, like a volcano!

Smaller Half

Do you mean baking soda? 

Hatchling

Yes. Baking soda. To make science.

Dream envy

The Hatchling got up from an afternoon snooze the other day and I asked her if she'd had a dream.

"Yes, I had a lovely dream" - what about?

"Fairies." - what colour were they?

"Pink, like a pom-pom" - lovely - what were they doing?

"They were building a statue" - out of what?

"Out of pieces that one of the fairies brought along" - how did you stick the pieces together, with glue or with tape?

"They stuck'ded themselves together, like Lego" - and did you help them?

"Yes I helped because if you were the best friends of the fairies you could help, otherwise you could only watch, like the elves" - were there elves there?

"Yes, they were naughty elves who were slapping and punching each other, but some other elves were good and they help'ded us".

I felt kind of envious after hearing this.  It does sound like a lovely dream.  When I was a kid I mostly had dreams about giant yaks devouring the carpet from under my feet faster than I could run away. Still, it made me the man I am today so I mustn't complain.

Yaaaaaaaak.

Niche talent

All parents consider their own children to be geniuses, presumably as a way of gaining street cred for having the enabling genes to make it possible, despite so blatantly failing to achieve anything in particular themselves.  And I'm no different.

So I was naturally pretty impressed when the Hatchling, newly minted 4 years old, asked us the other day why people at the bottom of the earth don't fall off.

I explained to her, using my best Up-Goer Five talk, that things always fall down, but "down" is not an absolute frame of reference (and I'm clearly paraphrasing myself here) - rather it is relative to the nearest large mass, which in our case is the Earth, so things always fall towards the centre of the Earth, this direction thus being perceived locally as "down".  She took that in her stride and didn't ask any further questions - a clear indication of either:
(a) superior intelligence and innate grasp of Newtonian physics, or
(b) superior intelligence and innate tolerance of my babbling nonsense.
The common thread being superior intelligence, I hasten to remind you.

So I was somewhat put out later that same day when she was attempting to eat a bowl of ice-cream and was dropping the ice-cream all over the floor, the table and herself.  On closer inspection, I realized she was holding the spoon upside-down.

Derr.

Game over, man, game over!

PTR

What spell do you think I would cast on you if I was a fairy?

Hatchling

I don't know, what?

PTR

I would cast a spell to make you BEAUTIFUL.

And a spell to make you CLEVER.

And a spell to make you FUNNY.

And a spell to make you PLAY A MUSICAL INSTRUMENT.

And a spell to make you KIND.

And a spell to make you LEARN ANOTHER LANGUAGE.

And a spell to make you STRONG.

But if I could only cast one spell on you, I would cast a spell to make you HAPPY.

Hatchling

Thank you Dadda.

PTR

What spell would you cast on me if you were a fairy?

Hatchling

I would cast a spell - ALIEN!

PTR

What? Really?  Why would you do that?

Hatchling

Because all of the aliens are friendly.

PTR

Thank you sweetheart, that's very kind. 

The story about the dinosaur, the Bony-Head, and the school-children

Once, the teacher at the school decided to take all the school-children out to dig up fossils.  They went out into the country and the teacher gave each of the school-children a little spade to dig with.  They started to dig, and soon they found a bone!  They kept on digging and they found another bone, and another bone, and lots more bones.

They took all of the bones, and they put them together into a Mr Bony-Head.  But the bones were actually dinosaur bones, not Bony-Head bones, so the Bony-Head they made was very very angry.  He stomped all around, stomp stomp STOMP, and was chasing the school-children, trying to eat them up.

So they took the Bony-Head apart again, and used the bones properly to make a dinosaur.  And the dinosaur was so happy that he had been put together properly that he was really really nice and friendly and made friends with all the school-children.  So they took him to the museum to live, and he really liked it there because of the other dinosaurs there.  And the school-children would come to visit him on weekends to play.

The story about the time I got baked into a pie

One day, your Mama was making a really big pie for us all to eat for dinner.  She used a bathtub to bake the crust until it was lovely and flaky and crisp.  Also, on the stove was a great big pot of boiling yummy pie filling.  Mmmmm.

I was leaning over the bathtub, smelling the delicious hot crust, when Mama turned and took the big pot of filling off the stove.  As she turned around again to begin to pour it into the bathtub, she bumped it into my back and knocked me into the pie crust without even noticing!  She poured the pie filling into the tub and covered me up with it, then put the pastry onto the top of pie, and popped it into the oven to cook, with me stuck inside.

An hour later, when the pie was piping hot and ready to eat, Mama came looking for me.  She asked you if you knew where I was, but you didn't.  "Dadda, Dadda, where are you?" you called.  Finally, you and Mama were getting so hungry that you couldn't wait any longer, so you decided to eat.  The great big pie went up onto the kitchen table and Mama cut it open with the big sharp knife.

She was very surprised when out I popped, all covered with flaky pastry and pie filling.  Wasn't that a funny thing to serve for dinner?

The story about the time your pram rolled away

Once, when you were a tiny baby, we took you to the markets to go shopping and your pram rolled away!  What happened was that I was pushing your pram with you inside, then your mama asked me to choose some mandarins.  So I let go of your pram, took a shopping bag, and started to choose the juiciest, yummiest mandarins.  But I didn't notice that your pram had started to roll away.

It rolled past the fruit shop. It rolled past the vegetable shop.  It rolled past the mushroom shop.  "Hey that pram is rolling away!" called the stall-holders.

It rolled past the chocolate shop. It rolled past the coffee shop.  It rolled past the deli.  "Won't somebody think of the children?" wailed the balloon-twister.

It rolled past the fish shop. It rolled past the chicken shop. It rolled past the bakery. "Oh the humanity!" cried the shoppers.

And it rolled all the way over the lift, and rolled right through the open doors.  And then, you reached out your tiny baby hand and pushed the button for the 3rd floor, where our car was parked.  Up, up, up, went the lift, and when it reached the third floor, your pram rolled right out the door and into the car park.

It rolled past the red car. It rolled past the yellow car. It rolled past the white car. But it didn't stop.

It rolled past the blue car.  It rolled past the black car. It rolled right up to the grey car and, bump, it stopped.

And your mama and I brought our shopping back to the car. Mama was cranky with me even though I had chosen very good mandarins because I was supposed to be looking after you and I had lost you and I didn't know where you had gone.  But then, when we got back to our grey car, there you were, in your pram beside our car, waiting happily for us to get back.

And we were so happy that we gave you lots of cuddles and kisses and nobody was sad or cranky anymore, and we all ate mandarins together.

The Hatchling can read - kind of...

[Scene: sitting in the hospital cafe, the Hatchling points at a sign on the wall] 

Hatchling
Dada, look! "C", "O", "F", "F", "E", "E"! 

PTR
Good reading, sweetheart!  And what word do all those letters spell? 

Hatchling
Emergency? 

PTR
Close enough.

Earworm

I heard a great song the other day.  It went something like this:

A-jump-a-jump-a-jump-a!
A-jump-a-jump-a-jump-a!
A-jump-a-jump-a-jump-a!
A-jump-a-jump-a-jump-a!
A-jump-a-jump-a-jump-a!

A-dance-a-dance-a-dance-a!
A-dance-a-dance-a-dance-a!
A-dance-a-dance-a-dance-a!
A-dance-a-dance-a-dance-a!
A-dance-a-dance-a-dance-a!

A-jump-a-jump-a-jump-a!
A-jump-a-jump-a-jump-a!
A-jump-a-jump-a-jump-a!
A-jump-a-jump-a-jump-a!
A-jump-a-jump-a-jump-a!

A-boingee-boingee-boingee!
A-boingee-boingee-boingee!
A-boingee-boingee-boingee!
A-boingee-boingee-boingee!
A-boingee-boingee-boingee!

[Repeat ad nauseum with verbs or onomatopoeia of your choice]

Really great lyric writing like that can just connect you to a higher plane.  Especially when you hear it coming from the back seat of your car for about 45 minutes non-stop as you drive along a long, straight, wilderness road while your Smaller Half snoozes in the passenger seat.

What a trip!

Vital signs

Hatchling

I take your tenchaba. 

[Sticks a finger in my ear] 

PTR

What is it? 

Hatchling

One o'clock!

Party pooper

Hatchling

Look at that boy.

Smaller Half

That's not a boy. That's a man. He has a condition called achondroplasia. Can you say "achondroplasia"?

Hatchling

Aycondopaza

Smaller Half

Oh my god, she can say "achondroplasia"!

PTR

Yes, because you just told her to.

Some day

[The scene - watching an animated nursery rhyme ending in a teddy bear going to school]

Hatchling

Teddy bear go to school?

PTR

Yes, one day you'll go to school too.

Hatchling

I go to school some day, when I am tall.