Thursday, April 29, 2010

Eli 8.8

I was driving Eli 8.8 home from school yesterday, and we were talking about a boy in his class. Let's call him "Thomas."

Thomas is "the" kid. He doesn't have any friends. He annoys everyone. He can be mean. He's small, and he's not athletic, and he struggles with his classwork.

Eli understands that while Thomas might be kind of a jerk, it's more complicated than that. He knows that Thomas probably doesn't have much to feel good about, and he does feel some compassion for him.

We were talking about this on the way home, and I said that it was hard when no one was watching your back. Then I asked him if he knew what that meant. "If I'm fighting a guy with a sword, and a guy with an axe sneaks up behind me, I won't notice him, and if someone isn't watching my back, that guy will chop my head off with the axe."

"A little more graphic than I would have gone," I said, "but that's correct."

"I was just using the rare example," he said.
***

"Dad, listen to this." Eli 8.8 makes an arm fart, although it's a weak effort. "It sounds like a FART, but it's with my ARM."

"It's music, but it's also exercise," I said.

"Do you know who's the best arm farter in my class?"

"I have no idea," I said.

"Mary!" he said. "She rides horses in the summer and gets all sweaty, so she learned how to really let 'em rip."

"So she's kind of an expert," I said.

"Oh, she's an expert," he said. "She went to A.F.U."

"What's that?" I asked.

"Arm Fart University," he said.

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