17 Reasons To Indulge

I stubbornly resist Ian's attempts to get me to let him use my cell phone as his own personal computer in the car.  I feel like anyone - especially a nine-year-old, should be able to survive a car ride without going online or playing a video game.  But Tuesday afternoon, I made an exception.

Ian wanted me to let him go on YouTube on the way back from Russian Math.  I refused, as always, and yet the lobbying continued:  he asked me if I was willing to play the radio in the car.  Knowing what Attorney McDershowitz was up to, but stubborn as always myself, I said that the radio was fine, and eagerly offered to play it for him, pretending I had no idea where this line of questioning was leading.  Then, astonishingly, the good barrister pointed out that listening to songs on YouTube was really no different from listening to the radio, except for the fact that YouTube has songs that Ian wanted to hear.

Ian had a practical reason to want to her his specific line-up of songs:  "I'm starting to forget two of the 17 Pokemon theme songs."  Somehow, I was sufficiently moved by this that I let him use my phone as his portable computer, for this specific occasion.  It turned out that you really have to know where to go on YouTube to get all 17 songs, because some sites only have 16 of them.  One by one, he sang out each song, in his delightful nine-year-old-boy soprano, with absolute purity of soul.  He pointed out to me, "I tried to teach this one to Madeleine, but she won't learn it."  He also told me that of the 17 videos, "the last three all black and white."

We lingered in the driveway so that he could complete the last few Pokemon theme songs, after we got home, before moving on to our formal evening homecoming.

(May 21, 2013)