Recent Conversations with the Beaner
Before I get to a couple conversations I've had with the Beaner over that past few days and weeks, I wanted to acknowledge the woman who said out a car window in the parking lot of the Supreme Food Market in University City today, "I read your blog!"
I was startled but rather pleased; it's only happened to me a couple times before, and not for a long time. If you were the person who made my day, please say hi in the comments! :-)
I wish I'd written the date on the notes I jotted down after these two conversations, which happened on the same day, but I didn't. I'm going to guess that they happened in mid-late April.
We were walking to Whole Foods, and as we passed the old Please Touch Museum building, the Beaner asked who would be moving in there. I said I didn't know.
Beaner: "Maybe I will."
Me: "Oh yeah? You mean when you're older?"
Beaner: "Yeah, because I'll need something big—bigger than our house. I don't know how many kids I'm going to have, so I'll need as much space as possible. I won't need to buy a car, though; I'll design and build that myself."
Later, over dinner, we got talking about his name, and how he's named after my favorite author.
Beaner: "Maybe I'll be an author, too!"
Me: "Sure, why not?"
Beaner: "What's an author?"
Me: "Someone who writes books."
Beaner: "Oh."
Yesterday morning, the Beaner and I sat in the kitchen, looking through the work in his Friday Folder. This picture was inside:
Beaner: "This is me, and this is Ms. Pysher saying that I behaved well on the play deck." [The picture was drawn on Thursday, which was a VERY BAD DAY for him in the morning; I wrote a post about it, but I never hit publish. It was too angry, and as I usually do when I write angry e-mails, I just saved it as a draft and never let anyone else see it. In any case, he had a better afternoon, and his teacher praised him for it. The text below the picture says. "Hmmmmmmm. OH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and represents him thinking, and then realizing what he'd done wrong.]
Beaner: "See how many exclamation points I used? I would have used more—maybe a million!—but I ran out of room."
Me: "What are these, teeth?"
Beaner: "No, those are just lines on my chin. [I think he was trying to capture the creases.] And I drew the nose this way because that's how noses are in real life. See? [pointing to the picture and then his own nose] Nozzles."
Me: "Nostrils."
Beaner: "Right, nostrils."
And then we both burst out laughing.