Tag Archives: boys

The hunter becomes the hunted

A couple years ago, I wrote about how Buster (then a baby) vexed Big Brother (then a four-year-old) by crawling among his play sets and tearing up all his railroad tracks.

And now you may be thinking: “Two years ago? This blog has been around that long? Wow, this guy doesn’t know when to give up!”

I don’t.

Anyway, Buster and Big Brother still fight over toys sometimes. But there are many other times when they play together, and (dare I say it?) co-operate to build things. There are even times when Buster accepts instruction from Big Brother in order to accomplish his playtime goals.

fine art

Working together to create a masterpiece of sibling co-operation.

Buster has no recollection of the havoc he caused to his brother’s play sets, nor of the gnashing of teeth resulting from his destructive ways. As far as he recollects, all of his frictions with his older brother have been honest disagreements between different engineering visions.

This lack of recall must make it especially hard on him that payback is a bitch.

There’s a New Baby in town, and his devotion to wanton destruction burns just as brightly as Buster’s ever did. The sock is on the other foot. Of course, the second sock has been pulled off and discarded, in the tradition of babies everywhere.

Now, Buster is the gnasher of teeth, shouting, “No, Baby, no!” using the same frantic urgency with which it was once directed at him. New Baby does him credit by living up to the very standard of disregard for admonition that he himself established all those forgotten times ago. Lack of recognition, coupled with an uncoupled train, makes it a hollow honor.

sacrifices had to be made

“I’m willing to let you chew on the plastic tunnel if it will save my train.”

I can’t explain to Buster that the unprovoked baby attacks he is enduring now are the same as he used to perpetrate. He can’t imagine that he could ever have been so annoying. Even if he could, it would only make him wonder why Daddy insists on bringing up random bits of ancient history that clearly have no relevance to his current suffering.

Daddy needs to be solving problems in the here and now, rather than telling his old-man stories of questionable accuracy.  New Baby needs to be taken away and possibly housed in a cage until Buster is good and done with his trains. Then, New Baby can be let out to tear them apart, so that when Buster is asked to pick them up, he can explain that New Baby was the last to use them. This is the kind of scenario that Daddy should be orchestrating, instead of fabricating some sketchy moral justification of New Baby’s outrages.

So much for compromise

Appeasement never works.

This house needs some law and order against the depredations of little brothers. At least until Big Brother gets home from school. Then we can renegotiate what little brothers are allowed to get away with.

Never let it be said that Buster doesn’t consider both sides of the issue.

Einstein didn’t have to poop on the potty!

Buster is adept at many skills for a two-year-old. He holds a pencil like a pro and draws abstract art as if preparing for his gallery opening. He makes up his own songs to serenade his Mommy at bedtime. He knows his way around an iPad better than I do and makes that little guy leap over the stampeding bulls in his favorite game with dexterity to make my head spin.

Helping with the baby

Teaching Daddy how to manage those tricky snaps on the baby’s Onesie.

Yet there are some toddler skills that Buster is not ahead of the curve on. It would be one thing if he didn’t have the capacity to do certain things, but he does. It’s more of a defiance issue, although even that doesn’t truly capture the spirit of it. It’s defiance mixed with indifference.

Buster thinks he’s pretty smart. I don’t know if he styles himself a genius, but his affinity for playing jokes can only lead to the conclusion that he believes he’s pretty clever. And a clever boy shouldn’t be asked to learn things he sees little use for in the rest of his life.

Just as an older child might ask about the long-term utility of Algebra, I hear, in Buster’s spirited remonstrations, the philosophical query: “When will I ever use big boy underpants in real life?” Such garments hold no candle to the convenience of the diaper.

“Einstein didn’t have to poop on the potty!” He doesn’t know anything about Einstein, and he doesn’t say this literally, but I can see in his eyes the formation of an idealized, toddler image of genius. His aggravated eyes tell me that the child genius would never waste his time on something so trivial.

Theory of potty relativity

“Everything is relative, my dear. Poop wherever you like!”

“Galileo didn’t pronounce K, F, or S sounds!” I bet he did, though this is not really about Galileo. It’s about a toddler whose opinion of his own world view dismisses the need to do inconvenient things.

Pope Urban's bad boy

Galileo Galilei: also too clever for his own good. The inquisition was not amused by his jokes.

It’s easy to replace the unnecessary consonants in words with the ever useful D and T. Mommy and Daddy understand the words formed by these substitutions, and since they are the only people he will ever need ask for a bowl of Lipton Noodle Doup, there’s no point in wasting effort on the unnecessary.

Buster can make the S sound. I know, because I’ve hounded him into doing it. He just doesn’t see the need. It is, after all, marginally more difficult for his tongue than making the D sound, so why bother?

Because Daddy is a trouble maker. One day, daddy wouldn’t make him any doup until he made the S sound.

“If you want soup, say ssssssss,” Daddy demanded.

Buster held out as long as he could, but he really wanted that soup.

Finally, he relented. “Sssssss,” he said.

“Now, say sssssoup,” the heartless Daddy persisted.

Buster sighed. “Ssssss . . . doup.”

That was close enough. Buster got his soup. And the last laugh.

Clever boy.

The boys’ guide to optimal utilization of toy trains and real dads

Playing with trains is fun. But you may not be squeezing out all the fun you can. Follow these simple instructions, young man, and you will extract every drop of enjoyment out of your trains.

Collect multiple, incompatible train sets

When asking for a new train for your birthday, choose one that doesn’t work with any of the sets you already own. When your dad buys the starter kit, he will become disappointed by how few pieces it contains. He will say something like, “This isn’t enough track to do anything with.” Fearful of ruining your big day with an inadequate gift, he will buy you lots of extra pieces so you can build a proper railway.

Nag your dad into helping you set up the track

Your dad is really just an oversized boy. He loves playing with trains, no matter how much work he claims to have. He may bitch and moan about his sore joints, but there’s no place he’d rather be than crawling around the floor, trying to force poorly molded pieces of plastic together. He may think he’s busy, but if you ask him to play trains every 10 seconds, his conscience won’t let him concentrate on anything else. TIP: Disregard any popping noises your dad’s knee makes when he tries to get back up.

Strategically distribute the pieces

By now, your mom has designated a specific box or basket for each of your many train sets. This would be a fine way to organize things if you were one of those focused kids who is satisfied to play with one thing at a time. Those focused kids are boring duds, and you are not one of them. Teach your parents this by putting all of your train parts into the correct storage bin, except for the most crucial piece. Place the piece that makes the whole set work in a different, randomly selected box. IMPORTANT: Forget which box you put it in. Now, you have to dump all the boxes on the floor in order to build the railway you hooked your dad into setting up. Parents secretly love this!

Mess of trains

An assortment of incompatible engines in front of a basket of almost all of the pieces of a track that may or may not be the correct gauge for one of the locatable trains.

Play with some random, piece-of-crap toy from the mess on the floor while your dad waits for you to find the missing piece

Remember that stupid toy you got in your Happy Meal? Yeah, the one you couldn’t even figure out what it was supposed to be. One of the three useless pieces of that junk just got dumped on the floor. Act fascinated by it while your dad waits for you to turn up the main bridge support for the Big Bridge Train Set you’re supposed to be building. This will supply your dad with three of the things he loves most in life: a big mess on the floor, a kid who’s making no effort to pick it up, and time wasted building a track that can’t be finished.

Whine about having to clean up such a huge mess

This is just a reminder. Everyone knows you are already an expert at this.

By following these instructions, you will get the most out of all your trains and even your lazy dad. Your dad really wants to play trains with you right now; he just doesn’t know it yet. And don’t forget about sharing. Share these instructions with your little brother. Your parents will be so proud of you.

More on boys and trains:
A good zoo will have some animals to compliment its train
History, trains, dinosaurs, trains, airplanes, and mostly trains

Eavesdropping on the class of 2026

Kids have the best conversations. If you ever fall into the habit of eavesdropping on kids when they discuss the world with each other, you will discover vast storehouses of knowledge. Between them, kids having a conversation know nearly everything, even if much of that knowledge is manufactured on the spot by their collective imaginations. There is only one thing kids in conversation will never know, and that is just how funny their conversation is.

The other day, I spent the afternoon with my four-year-old son and his five-year-old friend. We were driving home from the museum when we passed our local university’s beef cattle research facility.

5YO: “That’s the place where they butcher cows for meat.”

4YO: “Wait a minute. I thought we get milk from cows.”

5YO: “There’s different kinds of cows. There are cows we get milk from and cows we eat.”

4YO: “And cows that wag their tails.”

5YO: “Those are horses.”

Taft's pet cow

And then there are the smart ones who go to cowlledge.

(Further reading about cowlledge here.)

Later, at a red light, my son spotted a man waiting to cross the street. The man was wearing a McDonald’s cap and a polo shirt with a McDonald’s logo on the breast. He was holding a McDonald’s bag.

4YO: “Hey, look, there’s a McDonald’s man.”

5YO: “Yeah. He works at McDonald’s. He’s carrying a McDonald’s bag too.”

4YO: “He probably got fired. Then he said, ‘Well, at least I can get some food before I have to go home.’ That’s why he’s got some hamburgers.”

5YO: “Yup, he got fired.”

Get your burgers and go.

“Your severance package is frying up as we speak.”

When we got home, the kids started playing with an army tank and a helicopter. This is the conversation the tank had with the chopper.

TANK: “Hey, Buddy, you wanna go out to lunch?”

CHOPPER: “Okay, where should we go?”

TANK: “We can go to Wendy’s.”

CHOPPER: “Yeah! And we can have [soda] pop!”

TANK: “Actually, I don’t know if I can eat anything. I don’t really have a mouth, just some guns.”

Tank and helicopter make lunch plans.

“I’d love to have lunch with you but I have a problem. You see, I’m orally challenged.”

I only wish I could remember some of the other entertaining exchanges between them. I’m tempted to follow them around with a tape recorder, except that when I play it back I’d have to fast forward through all the fake fart noises and ensuing hysterical laughter. That would take way too much time.