A Remarkable Phone Conversation

[lokheed]

Last night I had perhaps the most significant and enjoyable phone conversation of my life. It was with my son, who up until now has never spent more than about fifteen seconds on the phone (and then only with serious prompting).

The phone rang last night around eight o'clock; it was Sara, calling to see if I could understand the new word Ben was using. He had been talking about it for the past hour, and she just couldn't place it. So she got him on the phone with me and asked him to say his new word. I started talking to him, asking him to use his words, and apparently he gripped the phone and would not let it go. For a couple of minutes I wasn't even sure he was there, he was so quiet and listening so intently. I prompted him to use the word a few times, and when he finally said it I just couldn't place it. So then he decided to take another tack.

"Take a train," he said. "Tram!"

"Oh," I replied, "do you want to go to the Magic..."

"Kingdom!!"

We had gone earlier in the day, but it had been so crowded that he changed his mind before we even got on the monorail so we went back out to the car and left.

"Dumbo!" Now Ben was getting into a groove. "Dumbo! Tomorrowland!"

"Ok sweetheart, " I coaxed, "What else do you want to do? Do you want to go see Mickey's..."

"Magic!"

"Alright. How about the Haunted..."

"Mansion. Haunted Mansion"

"What about Splash?"

"Splash!! Splash Mountain!"

"We can go on Splash Mountain if you want, that would be just fine. What about... P...."

"PIRATES!!!"

Ding! Ding! Ding! That was the word he had been saying earlier, which was hard to understand by itself but made perfect sense in context. So I started to sing to him, "Yo ho, yo ho..."

"...a pirates life for me," he cheerfully replied.

Then he moved onto a new topic. "Chick-fil-a!" he says. "Wendy's!!"

"Oh, sweetheart, you'll have to ask mama about that..."

Imediately I heard the thunk of the phone being dropped on the floor, and then in the background I heard him asking Sara to take him to Wendy's for fries. That was quickly followed by laughter. Sara got back on the phone and thanked me for figuring out what he was talking about, but apparently Ben wasn't done talking to me yet. He took the phone back from her, and said to me, "Daddy..."

"Yes Tiger? What do you want?"

We went on to chat for a couple more minutes. At one point he told me his favorite joke. I don't quite understand it, but apparently it's terribly funny. It goes something like this:

"Ahead! Ahun!! oop" That is followed by a beat of silence while trying to hold back the laughter, and then a big smile and an even bigger laugh. He told me that joke two or three times on the phone.

Eventually he told me that he loved me, and we said goodbye. All in all I think it was the finest conversation I have ever had on the telephone in my life.

Comments

[damashita.livejournal.com]

*sob* That is just wonderful.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, you've made a mess of me, too. xoxo, PC