Thursday, December 13, 2007

Yes, I know I didn't follow up on my earlier intentions to post regularly. In fact, it only came to mind today that I haven't posted on my blog for ages. Deal with it.

Kids are an interesting phenomenon... or, I suppose, they are interesting phenomena. Given that I only have the one, I'm not sure how that goes.

I have a son. I'm pretty bloody proud of my son, and being as how I try to be as objective (many say cynical) as possible, that may be quite a feat.

Here's the thing, though. My son is so much more exuberant than I ever remember being. I remember being quietly enthusiastic about some things, and blatantly unenthusiastic about a lot of others. My son, so it seems, can become unbelievably excited by life. Awesome.

Example: went to my son's Christmas concert (daycare, he's four). He is, apparently, one of the most popular kids in his peer group. Fuck knows where that came from, but it seems it's an honour, among his peers, to be chased by him. I don't get it, either.

Now, the kids had to get dressed up in something nice and Christmassy. My boy's mum, bless her gorgeous butt, bought him a Santa costume. She called me bizarre when I told her it looked like a red judogi (with white trim). I had a recurring urge to show him how to do lapel chokes. (In a good way).

The boy is a boy. Totally, a boy. Fearless, and a little mad. He jumps off things twice his own height for amusement (to be fair, so do I, on occasion).

So the concert happened, and was largely unremarkable save that there were no major crises, which is remarkable in itself when an event consists of fifty-odd kids on a stage at once. Bugalugs (we'll call him that) decided that he was hot in his costume, so took the most direct route to deal with this. He disrobed. Not entirely, happily.

After all the singing was done, it was time for the Santy Man... the man in red came in, did the rounds saying HO HO HO, and here was where I had my crisis of faith. Bugalugs goes apeshit. Not in a bad way. We didn't have to force a fifth of scotch down him to shut him up or anything. But I did for a moment think he might have an aneurism or something.

Being as he was dressed as Santa, he wanted Santa's attention. Thank fuck I haven't given him a knife yet. He probably would have stabbed the Red Man in the thigh. "Hey, hey, hey..." I thought we'd managed to teach the tyke to say, "Excuse me..."

Santa did well, though. "You look like me!" and Bugalugs was enormously satisfied.

Now I'm left in a quandary... I hate lying to my kid about anything. Santa is ... a lie? make-believe? bullshit? imaginary?

The thing my child is most excited about is bullshit. How do I deal with that?