Work, in Plain English

We’ve been living in Southern California for three years now, and I finally took my 10-year-old son to Disneyland for his first time last week.
For the first two years, I was either too busy or too cheap, but the guilt was building. After all, I was born and raised in SoCal, and trips to Disneyland were something I could take for granted.

This last year, it occurred to me it might be a good thing that until now, he hadn’t experienced the picture-perfection I had been immersed in growing up with both Disneyland and Hollywood. As it turned out, there were plenty of good things about the day I finally parked our car in the Donald Duck section.

We had a fantastic afternoon, and a magical evening, staying at the park until past closing time. That allowed us to experience a second, line-free and creepy-cool trip through Pirates of the Caribbean (got our own boat, and no one in the boat before or behind us), plus a semi-cooks’-tour of the Jungle Cruise.

One unexpected perk was that I got to do something together with my son that helped me see him as the young man he’s becoming, rather than the little boy he was. After all, we have no shared Disneyland Past. As for the boy, he got to exercise and strengthen his pre-teen critical thinking skills (“How did they build that?” “They don’t miss a chance to sell us souvenirs, do they?”), along with plenty of wide-eyed wonder. That park still utilizes all the secrets of creating an immersive environment, and hypercrafts a world you can lose yourself in.

He’ll never see “Maisy & Bill’s Walk Through Time in Georgia” the same way, but he’ll be eleven in January. He’s already leaving much behind: It’s about time I caught up.

My 9-year-old son and his 8-year-old buddy have worked out the meaning—or possible meanings—of the f-word. Here are their guesses:

1. Go knock your head on a brick wall
2. Money
3. Dumb
4. Shoot

It’s fun to think about what meanings children, as well as adults, consider to be “bad”, and to ask ourselves what we really mean when we say a word… and that in a few years (or less), my son and his friend will probably have the occasion to reevaluate this list.

It wasn’t purely a dream. I was napping one afternoon, and as I sank into the in-between, I was thinking about the French word, ‘revenant’ (not sure why). Then I thought of my son, and having to explain about French, and all those letters you don’t pronounce.

The next thing I knew, he was filling a sack with all the useless letters that he was going to take away from the French.

I saw a host of angry French folk, outraged and shouting at this impertinent, disruptive child. And I saw my son, with the knee-high sack at his feet, shouting back, “But you’re not even using them!”

Well, that woke me with a start. He really is just like that.

My son (who just turned eight) and I have been playing a car spotting game, calling out car makes, usually by spotting the logo on the back of the car.

The other day, he shouted out, “Inny! I mean – Outy!”

I was confused. “I thought we were playing the car game,” I said.

“Yeah,” he answered, “The logo with the four circles. That’s Outy, isn’t it?”

= . = . = . =

Folks outside of the US: Keep in mind us Americans would pronounce it ‘Audi’.