A Date Too Trecherous to Endure

Amy has been talking for about a year now about taking Ian on a "date" - one of those one-on-one outings between one parent and one child, and tonight is *the* night. I didn't think Daniel would be particularly okay about that; he gets me, but I'm kinda chopped liver in the Oedipal department, plus we have Madeleine, so our time together cannot be considered a proper counter-date. Plus they're going to a movie; we were contemplating Chuck E. Cheese for a short time, and the date-bound Usurper's guilty suggestion, but that's not the same.

But Daniel maintained his composure for a long time.... UNTIL!!!!

Until, that is, he found out that Amy and Ian were heading off on the exclusive getaway in my car. Why is my car so special? (Good question - it's a Corolla, a standard Daddy-drive-to-work-mobile...) It's special because I've only had it for about three months, and none of the Kinder have been for a ride in it - UNTIL TONIGHT!

When Daniel found out that they were going on the forbidden date in the forbidden car, he threw himself onto the gravel of the driveway and pitched a proper tantrum. He lay there, in his blue-and-green plaid shorts, red and blue t-shirt, white socks, and white velcro-bound shoes absolutely screaming. The prevailing chant seemed to be: "I want to go in a car, or not in a car!"

It took me awhile to figure out what that meant. My best guess, for what it's worth, is that he was saying, "If I can't go to Chuck E. Cheese in the Corolla, then I don't want to go anywhere at all!"

Finally, he got up and asked me to "hold onto my hand" - i.e. hold his hand - and he led me onto the road (with Madeleine tucked under my other arm). It turned out that, indeed, he didn't want to go to Chuck E. Cheese in "Concord." (Concord is the name that Ian gave to our minivan almost two years ago, named after our state capital. Apparently the name stuck... No, rather than driving in that far-too-familiar car (which he also said was too dirty to drive in - proof that he didn't know what my own car really looked like) - rather than taking the same-old-mobile, he decided that we should *walk* to Chuck E. Cheese (something like seven miles from our house). So he said we could walk down the road until we sasaw huck E. Cheese, and we headed in the exact opposite direction from Chuck E. Cheese.

I let us proceed about fifty paces, and then gently suggested that maybe we'd be better off going there in "Concord." He started to see my point.

Finally, though, I asked him, "Would you rather watch a Wiggles video or go to Chuck E. Cheese?" (I deliberately listed Chuck E. Cheese second, so as not to bias his decision with the lingering option of a video, since small children seem to pick the last option that they were offered, and I wanted to do exactly what he wanted, not what merely stuck in his head the longest...)

He wanted to watch The Wiggles.

We came inside, and he decided he wanted to watch Ratatouille instead. However, he noticed that "Where the Wild Things Are" was already in the DVD-player, so he opted instead for that. But he also insisted that I sit next to him, anticipating that he might get scared. Like clockwork, he got scared as soon as Max arrived on the Island of the Wild Things, which happens in the first five minutes.

So finally, he opted instead to watch Ratatouille, and suggested it in the most selfless way - something like "Let's watch Ratatouille, so you don't get scared."

And it's working. We're watching Ratatouille, and I'm not scared.

(June 12, 2009)