gor[b] Paul Gorbould: Words and Pictures

Eat me

A week ago my sister, a vegetarian, came over to spend the day with the kids. At lunch, she mentioned that she doesn't eat meat. The kids asked why not, and she said that she doesn't want to eat animals.

My wife and I have mentioned the origins of meat before, but haven't exactly dwelled on it. So I wasn't sure how the kids would react, but they didn't say much.

A few days later, the two of them are having hot dogs for lunch, and they bring meat up again. We brace ourselves for some awkward questions.

5-year-old: "Was this hot dog made out of animals?"

Mom: "Yes."

5-year-old: "I hope it wasn't made out of pigs."

Mom: "Hmm?"

5-year-old: "Pigs have mud on them."

Mom: "Ah."

3-year-old: "It's OK. Before they make them into hot dogs, they chop off their muddy little hooves."

5-year-old: "Oh, OK."

Both: (Munch munch munch.)

Streaks on a Plane

Flying back from Cuba a week ago, our kids were pretty tired from their first trip abroad. When my five year old gets tired, she gets mopey. The three year old? She turns into a raving lunatic.

She was manageable for the first two hours of the three-hour flight. Then she spills her water on her shirt, and insists on taking her shirt off. Fine, I figure, she's puny, she's got the window seat with only family members beside her. Shirt comes off. Shoes, too, for some reason.

Then: "Uh oh, pee pee!" So my wife takes her to the bathroom lineup, only to be sent back to her seat due to turbulence. Same thing happens three times, at which point my wife says the turbulence can go to hell, this child is gonna pee pee. That mission is accomplished, but she (child, not wife) kicks off her pants and underwear. And then she makes a run for it!

I don't know where she figures she's escaping to, but she runs down the aisle of the plane until she gets to my seat and I'm able to reel her in. By the time I plunk her in her seat, she's laughing like crazy and talking gibberish, her sun-bleached hair is all over the place and she's bouncing around trying to avoid a reunion with her pants. She looks like some sort of feral monkey child.

I tell the sniggering people behind us that we found her on the beach, and are bringing her home to see if we can civilize her.

At least the last part is true.

(And no, that's not a photo of the event, it's a father's Photoshop interpretation. I didn't have my camera with me. And I wouldn't put my child's ass on the internet. And the chortling passengers are missing. And she wasn't wearing shoes.)

Cuba no

So, we made it back alive. Our family spent a fantastic week on vacation in Cuba - the first time the kids had been on an airplane, seen the ocean, or even left the country. Everything worked out dandy.

Since I'm too tired to come up with my usual scintillating repartee, I think I'll hit you with a few pages from my Cuba family notebook. If children offend you, come back in a few days.

Top 10 Questions From My Vacationing Children, to Which the Answer is No:

1] Did you bring my ballerina constume?
2] Can you go back and get it?
3] Do wolves come from eggs?
4] Are there pandas in Cuba?
5] Does everyone in Cuba have to wear a wristband?
6] Do kids like rum?
7] Can I be a Cuban showgirl when I grow up?
8] Is Strawberry Shortcake on TV?
9] Is that girl's bathing suit called a "zuchini"?
10] Can I take my pants off on the airplane?

No monsters

Up, up and away! I'm off on vacation to somewhere sunny and warm, the first time we've taken a decent trip since the kids were born.

They've told me they just want to sit in the sand and play with plastic dinosaurs, which is pretty much all I want to do also. I'm not sure how they'll handle the flight, the hotel, the food, etc... but we'll get by.

We did a test trip a few months ago, staying in a hotel for two nights to see how they'd handle it. We arrived at night, and checked in. My youngest was already crashed out, but my eldest stormed into the hotel room and did a quick spot check, inspecting the room and giving both beds a quick bounce. Her evaluation:

"Nice room. Nice beds. No monsters. It's perfect."

We wrote that on the "how was your stay" card.

See you in a week.

Silent C.A.

My daughter came home from school today bubbling with enthusiasm over a song they played in gym class.

"It's great! At the start, they keep shouting 'Yo, man!' over and over. And then in the main part of the song, you get to wave your arms and sing, 'Silent C.A.'!"

Took a bit of figuring out... but we got it eventually. Here's a hint:

Not quite worthy of the wonderful site KissThisGuy.com, "the archive of misheard lyrics," but close.

(That site is where I learned I wasn't the only one to hear the Bad Moon Rising line, "There's a bathroom on the right" and Blinded by the Light's "Wrapped up like a douche, another rumour in the night.")

I should probably start a catalogue of song and band titles misheard by my wee ones.

Last year, they kept asking me to "sing that song that grampa sings, about the six strong bones."

(He was rehearsing for a role in The Music Man, so eventually it twigged that the song in question was Seventy-Six Trombones.)

And once in Tim Horton's, my youngest asked what song was playing over the speakers in the background.

I told them it was called Walk of Life, by Dire Straits, and they burst out laughing.

"Dire snakes? That's silly, dad!"

Mouth of babes

My five-year-old, looking out the window at today's snowfall:

"Uh oh. Yeti weather....."

Runner up line of the day comes from my three-year-old, watching her mother putting on deodorant under her t-shirt:

"Mommy, are you doing the chicken dance?"

Pre-Valentine’s chocolate

"Daddy, at kindergarten today I was the first person to come to the mat for story time and my teacher gave me a chocolate for me but not for the other kids, and she said, 'Put it in your pocket so the other kids don't get jealous,' but I didn't have a pocket so I put it in my pants. But then I forgot about it and it melted and I asked my teacher for help and she said, 'You can eat this part, but this part has to go in the garbage.'"

Let it snow, man

My kids built this paltry little snowman yesterday, scraping together the first few soggy flakes of what has turned into the first real storm of this winter. It's not much of a snowman - at least not in the Calvin & Hobbes sense, but it's a good reminder not to grumble about shoveling the sidewalk.

I got another reminder after finishing the shoveling this morning. As my two girls were kicking the snow around and marvelling at the piles of ice pellets, I put the shovel away and got out the ice melter to put on our steps.

"What's that stuff?" they asked.

"It's snow and ice melter," I said.

"What's it do?" they asked.

"It melts snow and ice," I said.

"WHAAAAT!?!?," they screamed in horror, shooting me the look you'd give if I sprinkled PCBs on your flowerbed.

"Why would anyone want to do THAT? Put it away, Daddy! Put it away!"

Away it went. And away they went, toddling down the sidewalk side by side, thoroughly enjoying the "slush, ice pellets and freezing rain" that had the rest of the city in a tizzy.