"Stop Me If You Think That You've Heard This One Before"
Please accept my apologies for the previous post’s serious nature. It won’t happen again. Anyway, I’m still figuring out my place here—although so is Connor, apparently.
No longer content to toe the line and accept everything we say as the unmitigated truth, he’s developed—gasp!—his own opinions and is turning into quite the defiant little man, perhaps in response to having been uprooted more often in his first four years of life than a loose-lipped felon in the Witness Protection Program.
(As a consequence of our travels hither and yon, Gypsy life is suddenly starting to look less nomadic than the existence we’ve carved out recently.)
More people in America can probably describe the practice of reverse psychology than can find Iraq (or Canada) on a map, but just because the practice is known far and wide doesn’t mean it doesn’t work on three-year-olds.
And how.
“Whatever you do, don’t wash your hands before dinner,” we’ll say with eyes beaded and brows furrowed. Sure enough, within seconds the water is running, soap is squirting and germs are dispatched.
“Please don’t eat all of your dinner,” we’ll suggest, with a slight waft of desperation. In moments, we’ve got a chipmunk-cheeked kid seated across the table gasping for air because his face is packed.
“Stop spitting on the floor,” we’ll implore, momentarily forgetting that we’re supposed to ask him to do the opposite of whatever it was we wanted him to do... or stop doing.
Sure enough, there will soon be a glob of spit resting at his feet, a string of which will still be stuck to the corner of his mouth.
To say that Connor is obstinate would be an understatement on par with NASA’s immediately-regretted-as-soon-as-it-was-uttered phrase, “Obviously a major malfunction,” when the Challenger blew up in ’86.
But for all his hard-headedness, when he closes his eyes at the end of the day, turns off his mind and melts into the bed—exhausted from a day’s-worth of disobedience and just deserts—it’s hard to remember the obtuse little boy who spits on the floor.
No longer content to toe the line and accept everything we say as the unmitigated truth, he’s developed—gasp!—his own opinions and is turning into quite the defiant little man, perhaps in response to having been uprooted more often in his first four years of life than a loose-lipped felon in the Witness Protection Program.
(As a consequence of our travels hither and yon, Gypsy life is suddenly starting to look less nomadic than the existence we’ve carved out recently.)
More people in America can probably describe the practice of reverse psychology than can find Iraq (or Canada) on a map, but just because the practice is known far and wide doesn’t mean it doesn’t work on three-year-olds.
And how.
“Whatever you do, don’t wash your hands before dinner,” we’ll say with eyes beaded and brows furrowed. Sure enough, within seconds the water is running, soap is squirting and germs are dispatched.“Please don’t eat all of your dinner,” we’ll suggest, with a slight waft of desperation. In moments, we’ve got a chipmunk-cheeked kid seated across the table gasping for air because his face is packed.
“Stop spitting on the floor,” we’ll implore, momentarily forgetting that we’re supposed to ask him to do the opposite of whatever it was we wanted him to do... or stop doing.
Sure enough, there will soon be a glob of spit resting at his feet, a string of which will still be stuck to the corner of his mouth.
To say that Connor is obstinate would be an understatement on par with NASA’s immediately-regretted-as-soon-as-it-was-uttered phrase, “Obviously a major malfunction,” when the Challenger blew up in ’86.
But for all his hard-headedness, when he closes his eyes at the end of the day, turns off his mind and melts into the bed—exhausted from a day’s-worth of disobedience and just deserts—it’s hard to remember the obtuse little boy who spits on the floor.
posted by Carter at 5:51 PM
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