Private Thoughts Made Public

I’ve just had a phone call from my son. He’ll be 5 in a couple of months, and the conversation went like this:
Dad: “Hello?”
Offspring: “Can you buy me a Scooby Doo 2 video or dvd?”
D: “Of course I will. How are you?”
O: “Fine”
D: “Have you been to nursery today?”
O: “Yes”
D: “What did you do there?”
O: “I can’t remember. bye!”
He was obviously not in one of his talkative moods. His memory is usually a lot better than that, though, he only left the place about an hour ago!
When he was about three and a half, my mum took him to a local garden centre that also doubled up as a pet shop. They had lots of exotic animals there, like snakes and parrots and an iguana, as well as the more usual fare such as rabbits and hamsters. When they arrived at the car park he said “It was snowing last time I was here.” That was at least six months previously, and he recognised the outside of the building. So there’s nothing at all wrong with his memory. Or his logic, or his ability to dominate a conversation, or get things his own way.
Last weekend he put on a little Olympic gymnastic display for us. He ushered everyone out of the dining room apart from me and my mum, and he told us where he wanted the chairs, how he wanted everything organised, and even tidied away his own toys so he had room on the carpet for his display. He got out a little electronic keyboard and told my mum what to play before he did each jump, and also after the display. He wanted to move the dining table so that we could all sit behind it and eat snacks while he did his show, but we reminded him that we’d all just had afternoon tea and there waren’t any snacks left. He then got everyone back in, pretended to take our tickets, told us where he wanted us to sit, and spent the next five minutes jumping off the arm of the chair, turning round in mid-air to land with his back to us, and rolling around on the floor ending with his arms up in the air like the gymnasts do on TV. Finally he got some toys out of his toy box and gave all of us a prize, warning us not to forget to give him his toys back before we all went home. So there he was, operations director, musical director, admissions clerk, athlete, gymnast and prize-giver. The thing is, he didn’t tell us beforehand what he was planning to do – he just told everyone to leave the room and then told us where to put the tables and chairs and what we were to do. He even told us not to clap until the end. Priceless.
Anyway, just thought I’d better write that conversation down before I forgot it. Memories of childhood and parenthood like that are worth preserving.
Update on previous post: I bought my mum a set of three little books which are a compendium of all the joke emails that have been circulating the internet over the last few years. At least it saves me having to print a few off each week to read in between each course when I go to my folks for Friday night dinner. See, I have an ulterior motive for everything.