La Garrapata

“Una Gar-ra-pa-ta?!” She drew out the word when she repeated it, squeezing her lips into a crooked line and pulling her face to the side in disgust.

And that’s how I knew that I had indeed correctly remembered the Spanish word for ‘tick.’

I was at the Aquarium with my friend Georgina. Isaac was begging us to hurry up and get to the otters; her boy was slowly sidling backwards toward another exhibit and out of sight.

That morning at the breakfast table, Isaac scratched the back of his neck. “Mama, boo-boo,” he’d started. I almost didn’t look up from my waffles, assuming he was referring again to the small scrape of mysterious origin we’d discovered by his right ear the day before. But I put down my fork. “A boo-boo, honey?”

On lifting his hair, I saw what looked at first like an odd mole that had been picked at and irritated. “It’s a bug,” Mike pronounced. “It’s a tick.”

My reaction was immediate – complete repulsion – which I then tried to cover as quickly as possible with a smile. “Daddy will fix it,” is what came out. I patted his leg while Mike went for the tweezers.

I tried to be light and nonchalant when I told Isaac not to scratch it, please, Daddy’s coming. There was a whimper just behind my frozen grin. That this creature, this blood-sucking, disease-carrying creature would find its way onto the perfect body of my baby, into the tiny divot in the small of his fragile neck, at the wispy blonde hairs, at that vulnerable spot, was clearly unnerving to me.

Mike came back with the metal pinchers I knew he needed, but I was not reassured by the sight of them. “You can’t leave any of it in there,” I told Mike, voice quavering. He stopped; looked at me; lowered the tweezers a half inch in the air. “I know,” he replied carefully, and I could feel in his tone what he was holding back, that he was summoning all the patience he could find in that instant not to tell me to go to hell. It was a stupid thing to tell a boy scout after all.

Isaac cried out when the tweezers tweezed. I was jiggling nervously in my seat, restraining his hands from going to the back of his neck.

“I got it all,” Mike said after the painful few seconds were up.

It was fortunate, I now realize, that Isaac was strapped into his highchair at the time, making the pinchy but successful extraction slightly easier.

Lyme disease is pretty rare in our county, though it exists, and as if the bugs observe county lines. To have it tested, we had to send it three counties away and pay $29, which makes me think no one is really keeping track of how prevalent the disease is. How many other neurotic people out there are keeping the blasted bug and mailing it away with a check? Right.

The tick lived on top of my bookcase over the weekend in a plastic Rubbermaid container I normally fill with raspberries, or peas, trail mix, or some other treat I’ve carefully selected for Isaac’s snack. Every time I thought of it up there, I shivered. I figured it’d be dead by the morning, but it was very much alive, alive and well the whole time until we sent it on its way on Monday. There was a nano-second, each time before I rounded the corner in the hallway to where the bookcase is, that I imagined finding the vile bug had busted out of its plastic prison to sit lounging on one of the shelves catching up on its reading – Kafka maybe.

If anything had a chance of killing it, maybe it was the postage meter, but I was beginning to feel doubtful that even that could do in the predator. It seemed to need nothing – not air, not food…Well, no. I guess it had already filled up, hadn’t it.

The results came back negative for Lyme disease and the other day Isaac, just awake from a nap, felt the back of his neck and smiled. “Mama, boo-boo ‘mall,” he said.

I’m not sure what to take away from this experience – how about that Isaac associates his father with saving the day, or that I’m still rather far from any Buddhist agenda when ticks (or snails) are involved, or maybe that unexpected villains can enter the picture of your life in unexpected ways and grab hold of what is most precious.

The cost of having the tick you pulled off your son tested for Lyme disease? - $29. A new Rubbermaid container? - $1.35. Knowing what’s on your bookcase won’t move until you pick it up? – Yeah, you got it - priceless.

the tomato plants

- Ten-day-old seedlings my son carried home from the cuttings faire.

He tells me over and over again about his baby plants – the fact that they are babies, holding his arms as if cradling an infant and rocking, rocking. Holding his thumb and index finger as close together as they’ll go without touching and scrunching his eyes closed, signifying their littleness.

He picks out a place in the garden where he wants to plant them. “Dare! dare!” he points, jumping in place. I suggest we wait until they’re stronger to remove them from their plastic cup, a little bigger than the two-leaf, one-inch-high sprouts they are now, fragile by any measure. He reluctantly agrees.

They are so different from what they will become: bold, thick-stemmed plants with arms bending to the weight of their charges- green, then reddening into brilliant sunsets. My son has no idea of their potential, no fear of what ills they might contract, but loves them just as they are, knows only to dig the hole and watch.

the rain

“Da dar!” my two-year-old says from his carseat, dribbling his fingers down his head in imitation of the rain.

It takes me a beat, but only that. We’ve been together all day after all, me deciphering his language, his mind.

“The rain is on the car?” I try.

“Yeah!” he says, relishing whenever he is understood.

“The rain is everywhere,” I tell him. “The rain helps the plants grow. We like the rain; it’s a good thing,” I add for balance, reminded as I am of the significantly higher number of songs, sayings, and opinions whistling the news of rain as bleak and depressing.

“Dib, dib, dib,” he continues happily, being the drops. “Dib, dib, dib, dib.”

And his fingers rain puddles, slick with excitement at his feet as we drive, the wipers brushing aside the shiny wet stars that won’t stop falling.

borrowing faith

I've already covered to some extent my husband's rampant optimism in the face of the move. “We'll be together, and we'll be fine” was one of his mantras from the start. Apparently, he held the opinion that our little family could withstand realtors on illegal visits and a month of double rent and a 60-day termination of tenancy notice and all the rest. His faith worked me, eventually loosening a few of my anxieties, though I held fast to some of my favorites.

The place we've moved to is nice. Smaller, more expensive, and nice. One of the things that we like about it is that we sit tucked off the main street, behind a church parking lot. Maybe that's two things: the tucked away part, and the proximity to the church.

For the last six weeks the marquee out front of the church has said the same thing: “Sermon: God's Love.” I'm not a church person, but I can tell you that I love watching the women in their white square-heeled pumps and matching purses – full-hipped women shaking out the pleats of their flowered skirts as they walk. Flare right. Flare left. Boom, swing, boom, swing, as they traverse the hilly asphalted parking lot.

And there's the singing.

The day I met our current landlord, it was a Sunday afternoon. Standing out in the front yard of the house, my attention was divided between the details of a prospective rental and a congregation on fire. “Whoah!” I say indicating the raucous clapping and singing coming from under the steeple. “They mix it up, don't they?”

“Oh, don't worry,” my landlord said, worriedly waving his palms. “It's not like this all the time!”

“I love it!” I told him.

I met our neighbors, the Johnsons, while hauling boxes out of my trunk. “I'd love to have you over once we get settled,” I said to Mrs Johnson. “Whenever that is.”

“No one's going anywhere,” she said, with a hint of an accent I think is German. “No one goes anywhere so fast anymore. I'm 80 and my husband's 89.” A man in blue coveralls waves from the open garage door before continuing to hunt through a metal box for some kind of tool.

“It's quiet here,” she offers. “Very quiet, this neighborhood.” There's a small pause. “Except on Sundays. They get a little loud with their singing at the church.”

Three days after we've turned in the key to the old place, I turn my back on my living room piled in boxes and grab my gardening gloves. People are starting to arrive at the church. Boys in ties race each other to the door, girls play freeze tag around an SUV.

Then, from my squat beside the callas, I hear the sermon start – at first mostly muffled noise. I plant the snap dragons I bought – velvet red and lemon yellow stalks; I debate where to put the fig tree. The preacher is working himself into a fit of praise, washing over his congregation with waves of sound that appear to be questions. Mud cakes my jeans, and I unearth more earthworms. Slowly, the volume of the service rises until I can hear words and phrases clearly.

“The power,” he is saying. “The power! The power here...”

A woman's voice answers. “The power!”

Preacher: “The power here is love!”

Congregation: “The power!”

Preacher: “The power here is love!!”

Congregation: “The power here is love!!”

Preacher: “The power! The POWER!! The POWER here is LOVE!”

Then the singing starts.

Isaac is TWO

The birthday hike --> Crowned King Baby -->

Surfacing

That's the title of one of Margaret Atwood's early novels. I haven't even started yet, and I digress -- go figure. So, my son turned two just four days and one hellish move after the last post. Allow me to put up a couple pictures...

daffodils

Because of my son's fascination with the answering machine buttons, we get to hear the real estate agent's message over and over again. Her voice sounds almost bored -- “as convenient and painless as possible,” her dog barking in the background.

My buffer is gone, nothing between me and the outside world, which has apparently just become even more hostile. Where should I put the daffodil blossoms?

Holding Isaac in the rocking chair, he is long asleep, but I don't dare put him down. It's like the weight of him is rooting me, like without him I will just float away, or he will, or both of us, in separate directions.

Mike comes home; the house is dark. He finds me, finally, in Isaac's room. “What are you doing?” he asks. “Holding the baby,” I answer. “You have to put him down some time,” he says. But I shake my head and rock.

people

People are made of concrete and splinters. They are made of tear gas and florescent lighting. People are made of latex, and litter, broken brown beer bottles left in paper bags and spoiled seafood. People are made of Sweet n Low, cayenne and anything they can get their hands on. People are made of glossy pages and construction sites. People are made of red lights, asbestos, the smell of too many copy machines in one place with no ventilation, hang nails and road kill.

Our creeds read like deeds the devil owns. Our minds are lists of sweatshop toys

when people are made of lactic acid and vertigo, barbed wire, Taco Bell, and melanoma, when people are made of minor chords and smog.

renters’ haiku

My sister still talks about the haiku I wrote in the entry from over two years ago when I was a starving, raving preggo locked out of my car at the pool. So, in the whirlwind of stress that has been my last two weeks, as my landlord prepares to sell our house, prepares evil messages on lawyer letterhead, as my son recovers from a stomach flu that had me wondering if we would just run out of things to wear that weren’t already covered in vomit, as, as, as…I thought I’d offer just a couple renters’ haiku. Nothing like some 5-7-5 to still the mind:

Application hell
your references haven’t called
meanwhile homeless


the pet deposit
she’s a CAT, not a RHINO!
are you kidding me?


No one trusts the cat
maybe I’LL pee on your rug
or just get a fish


“Why don’t YOU buy it?”
realtor asks in a sweet tone
someone hold me back

moving and marriage

I knew what he was, but I married him anyway. My husband is a dedicated optimist. I think they even have their own clubs, these people. You don't hear about it, though; it's secret, like the masons.

When my favorite houseplant, the one with the hint of yellow-orange in the center of each leaf, began dropping those leaves one by one, Mike's take on it was “Maybe it's just part of its cycle.” I've heard the “cycle” line plenty – right before my rosemary bit the dust for good, and when the umbrella plant browned and withered to nothing.

This move has brought out the worst of his optimistic tendencies.

“What if the garbage man at whatever new house we find doesn't wave to Isaac?” I worry, the anxious knots in my stomach worthy of an Eagle Scout. “Maybe it'll be the same garbage man!” Mike pipes.

“Geezuz Christ!” I tell him. “You would think of something positive to say at a time like this!”

the blessings of renting (or, another house about to be sold out from under us)

I am writing this from where I'm holed up inside Isaac's bedroom waiting for the people who've come to look at the house to go away. Isaac is asleep. Has been for an hour. I told the landlady he would be and if they wanted to see the whole place and not tiptoe around, she should change the time. She didn't. It's her house, we just made a life here.

I am sitting on the floor with my back barring the door and feeling more than a little like a protective mother bear. I didn't want Isaac to wake up and find strangers wandering around his house, and, frankly, I didn't want to have to deal with them myself – didn't want to worry about how much to smile or smirk, or where to be while they peered into our closets and sniffed around our salad spinner. Okay, I'm lying – we don't have a salad spinner, but you get the idea. Mike's out there; and I'm in here.

Isaac hasn't moved from the position I put him down in. He's tired. Been out with his dad playing in the dirt all morning. But all these new energies in the house must be reaching him, at least you'd think. Aha, he's starting to stir. I just want him to hold on until all this is over.

It must be a blessing. This shuffling, this moving against our will. Four rented houses in three years' time. How grateful I am as a writer to be given this opportunity over and over again to reinvent, live in turmoil, flare with anger at realtors and property managers, the former arriving in canary yellow Porsches and standing in the driveway discussing my family's fate with the landlady. Thank goodness I am forced to review my years one by one, or by season, (“Hmm, that was spring, we must have been living on 10th Street.”), forced to look hard around me at what would soon be taken away.

Why just the other morning I swelled with joy and nostalgia on seeing that man in the black knit cap walk past the white for sale sign in the front yard. He walks past every day. Every single day, talking to himself. I sometimes hear him shouting at invisible people as he approaches from farther up the hill. Whenever I back the car out, I look for him first. You never know when he'll just appear, one shoulder sagging, always dressed too warmly for the weather, muttering crossly and staring at the ground. He waved at me once. In a couple months, I'll never see him again.

He'll be banished into history like the man who used to wander around the Forest Avenue apartment – that was four moves ago already – his big belly never quite willing to remain under his striped teeshirt, his beard wild. He came to our garage sale, bought my Matisse prints for 50 cents each.

What would I rail against? What would I worry about? If landlords kept promises and leases were more than leashes? How would I be able to write so carefully and with quite as much ardor about the sunflowers in the small square of dirt the gophers tilled for me, their rust and gold plumage blooming nearly to the size of hubcaps a foot from the ground, and when they're through, bowing their starry heads.

the essential nature of context

Isaac: “Dai?”

Me: “We can't go outside until you put on clothes, Isaac.”


Isaac: “Dai?”

Me: “Okay, you're ready to go inside?”


Isaac: “Dai?”

Me: “Yeah, if you hang it there, it'll dry.”


Isaac: “Dai?”

Me: “Well, penguins don't really fly, Iz; they like to swim.”

the color of justice

It was Mike's idea to go fancy.

I was in Goodwill looking for an old, ornate frame for one of Isaac's paintings. He's an interesting toddler artist, my guy. Gets in close with his markers, concentrating on the lines he's about to make. Chooses each new color with fanfare. His favorite new sign, by the way is 'rainbow.'

With a paintbrush the other day, he watched the thick strokes carefully. One pass with red. A second pass. Orange next, coming in curving complements. As if he were raised crawling around studios and galleries, he steps back, stares at his work, tilts his head, replaces the brush, pronounces it done, and walks away.

My friend, whose son is busy slathering layer number six of red on red, his canvas a solid block of goo, looks over at us, stunned. “That's a framer!” she comments.

It was a Saturday, and Goodwill was busy. Everything with a black tag was half price. The wide gold frame had potential but wasn't quite right. And the popularity of metal, mauve numbers was simply not acceptable. I had already determined this lack of cool, old frames in the right size, but lingered, checking out the burnt orange sectionals and rows of identical flower vases. There were two boys playing nearby in the toy section. Well, really only one was playing – he looked about nine, his brother was about two, not much bigger than Isaac.

The two-year-old was trying to play, but his older brother kept thrusting a giant stuffed green snake in his face, pushing him over with it, half frightening, half annoying the tyke. Again and again it happened, until the snake was abandoned for a yellow truck and then a large white bear – the little one squealing in protest, moving away, begin pursued, crying, the cycle repeating itself.

Their mother appeared not to be fully tuned in to the scene, busily choosing among sleeveless turtlenecks in shades of blue and grey from a rack of knit tops.

It bothered me more than I would've imagined, this teasing, this sibling rough housing, maybe because only one side was being rough, or even had the ability to be. This was a classic case, and I routed for the underdog with more emotion than I had at any other time I could remember. I was incensed, but seemingly helpless.

We drifted apart, me and the victim/victimizer. Then, just as I decided I was done and began a brisk stride for the door from the back of the store, I saw him again – the nine-year-old. He was walking in my direction holding the snake, looking a confident master of his world.

Damn me if you must. Put me down as perpetuating the violence. I am guilty of a lack of compassion for the aggressor. Mea culpa. Mea culpa.

Ever so subtly, I edged over as we passed each other, crowding the boy in next to a rack of pink and purple plus-sized women's blazers. Just a toe, only that, turned out just enough.

I kept my eyes focused ahead of me, but I felt the bump of his sneaker hitting into mine, heard the muffled thud of a small frame meeting thin, brown, industrial carpet.

the truth about trucks

Once we made it to the board book section of the bookstore, all hell broke loose.

Apparently, Isaac's truck obsession is shared by one or two other little kids, since on the shelf were parked about two dozen books on various trucks, these books taking the shape of the truck they starred, wheels afixed to the bottom.

Isaac arranged all 24 on the floor like some emergency scene/late night truck stop, while I perused the other books, humble though they were without the benefit of parts to make them ambulatory.

“There are trucks for all kinds of jobs,” I read aloud while Isaac crashed a cherry picker into a gift collection of Harry Potters in Spanish. “This dump truck is hauling coal from a mine.”

“Oh,” I continued, still speaking aloud, “I wonder what kind of health insurance the miners have, Isaac. Mmmm, yummy. Burning coal,” I added sniffing the air. My son ignored me, a tractor book in one hand, fire engine in the other.

Isaac's fascination with trucks knows no bounds. It is his sole purpose for getting in the car – to look for big trucks (“dig ducks”). He has had a personal relationship with the garbage man since he was 16 months old. Construction sites send him into peals of joyous laughter. He can hear a truck that's thinking about turning up our street from blocks away. “Vrrrrrooooom!” he narrates gleefully and races to the window. His little feet stomp and dance when he catches sight of the phone book in anticipation of the towing section. But both of us tired of the same old flatbeds in the yellow pages, we had headed to the bookstore.

In the middle of the store, before we had journeyed as far as the children's section with its fleet of mobile literature, Isaac suddenly and uncharacteristically broke free of my hand and ran pell nell toward a display just ahead. “Dig duck! Dig duck!” he squealed, clutching a jigsaw puzzle box to his chest. When I could finally pry it from his arms, I discovered the picture on the box showed dump trucks and backhoes positioned about in some sort of quarry setting – clearly a fantasy destination for my boy.

My mind is far, so far from what you could ID as simple or innocent, far from this pureness of fascination. Sometimes I worry that I am the wolf put in charge of the sheep, raising this child. Whose version of the world will win out? Will his, in its enthusiasm, lurch forward ahead of mine, its darker sister? Will it have to be me who tells him, “Isaac, those trucks bulldoze the trees you love, and those over there pollute the air so that we sometimes get sick.” Or will he pull me over to his side in one clean burst of ferocious, simple love?

two kinds

There are people, like us, who arrive at the playground early and wipe the bird shit off the slides. And then, there are the other people who get there later - after someone else has already done the dirty work.

the phone: an evolution

A baby is born. You call everyone you know to tell them.

The first week goes by. Everyone you know calls you to congratulate you.

The first months go by. Your baby reaches curiously for the phone when you are talking on it; you are easily able to distract him.

A few more months. Your baby figures out what you never could - how to change the ringer on the phone. It is now a high pitched ding-a-ling piercing through the scene of your every day.

You survive the first year. Your baby becomes wildly jealous of the phone, howling like an abandoned pup whenever you touch the receiver.

Toddlerhood full-blown. Bedtime routines are revamped and fortified. You turn off the ringer so the phone doesn't wake up the baby while you're putting him down. You often forget to turn it back on.

More time passes. More friends recede from you. You no longer have to turn the ringer off; no one calls anymore.

fantasy future

Sometimes I think about all the trials Isaac could be subjected to growing up– the stupid pranks, the name-calling, the peer pressure to do any number of things, the just-plain cruelty that kids can dish out onto one another, that leave us doubting ourselves, or doing things we don’t want to, or believing that someone else knows more about us than we do, that, in turn, leave us wounded, even as adults, of course as adults, that make us questioning, and vulnerable, and writers.

I can’t bear to think of Isaac going through these things, and I told Mike recently that I often catch myself imagining just the right thing to say, the right way to go about it, so that Isaac won’t have to suffer the indignities of childhood. I told him, laughing at myself, that I just need to believe for a while longer I have the power to protect him. I told him, I am just not ready to accept that he will have to go through some form of nonsense no matter what, or that (god forbid) he may not listen to his mother and therefore find himself trying to juggle his doubts in the aftermath of some less than positive incident. I have decided to hold onto the notion, for now, that I will find a loophole through which I will pull my son to safety.

To my surprise and relief, my husband shares my fantasy.

“But what if we can?” he said.

And that was all it took. I was right back up on the rocks with him, standing, waiting to swing out over the creek at a moment’s notice, the rope secured to the tallest tree, one foot coiled around it and resting on the knot at the bottom. Parents at the ready, and all possibilities open, as we gaze out ahead of us at the smooth, calm waters of our boy’s future.

signs of the times

Today was exciting. I received two DVDs in the mail that I'd ordered on sign language for babies/kids thanks to a friend's recommendation.

We've watched one and a half so far, which is amazing considering Isaac wanted me to replay the section on "train" 150 million times (approximately). They didn't teach "truck," so I guess it was the next best thing. Having the train sign will be good, since he's had the misfortune of acquiring the word "choo-choo" for train and in most words Isaac says he tends to replace the first consonant sound with a "d."

Whenever I tell people that I'm teaching my son sign, they say things like "Oh! Great! ...(extended pause)... Is he...?" "No, he hears perfectly well," I manage.

I know I should be educating, telling them about the advantages both socially and intellectually for the child who learns to communicate with his or her hands, regardless of hearing ability, and I do, usually, though it's rare they are truly interested. What I really want to do when faced with these people is hang myself boneless across an armchair like my friend's 10-year-old at Christmas brunch, look up at them with a mix of disbelief and disdain and then say things like "Can we go ice skating? SOMETHING? Anything is better than THIS! I'm so BORED!" Because really, that's how they make me feel. Bored with their tiny little narrow vision of the world.

I'm left with a question: With a fondness for such small boxes to stuff all they know in, why do they need such big SUVs and McMansions?

PS - there is a great online dictionary of American Sign Language with video demos.

the wisdom of youth

I remember how excited I was when Isaac learned to shake his head “no” and nod “yes.” What a world of difference it made in our communication possibilities. He has a new, similar tool at this stage of the game – his own version of “little” and “big.”

To say “little,” once must hold one’s thumb and pointer finger as close together as possible; also, squinting one’s eyes closed while doing so adds emphasis. To say “big,” one raises a slightly cupped palm over one’s head – such that it resembles someone about to attack someone else, and utter the word “Bo” (pronounced something like the beginning of the word “ball”).

With little and big, Isaac describes just about his entire world. I know which truck he’s looking for, I know his perception of the dog we just passed. He knows which pot to hand his dad to make the oatmeal, and how to tell us how much oatmeal he’ll be eating.

Today, while cutting open (at Isaac’s request) one of the three pomegranates left in our kitchen from the by-now defunct season, and already covered in bloody juice, my knife slipped. Normally, this would call for much shaking and sucking of the effected area of the hand, cursing, pronouncing my impending death, and repeatedly whining about my discomfort. Since becoming the parent of a sensitive toddler, however, my days of melodrama are over. Any cry of pain from Mama is very distressing to my boy. (This is the same child who sobbed uncontrollably when the floating Christmas candles singed a leaf on the plant next to them.)

Naturally, upon the knife making contact with my left ring finger, I did make one of those sounds, the kind that mean “Ouch.” plus a touch of “How stupid could I have been?!”

Isaac grows solemn. Then, frowning, pronounces “Mama,” accompanied by the sign for “pain.”

“Yes, Mama has a boo boo. Let’s just go take of care it,” I tell him, all the while aching to throw my maimed body on the couch and wail.

I get out the box of bandaids, my babe watching me closely. The first one I pull out seems good enough. It’s one of those H shaped things that I think are for fingers but I’ve honestly never been able to use. I quickly decide this would be the day to start taking advantage of first aid engineering.

“This one’ll work,” I tell Isaac.

“No,” he says seriously. “Nooooo, Mama. Bo!” he explains, his attack hand in the air.

“Yeah, this one,” I tell him. “It’s not too big; look.”

At first, application goes well, but the upper half of the H won’t cooperate. The cut is too far up on my finger.

“Bo, Mama” Isaac keeps repeating. “Bo.”

“We’ll just wrap this part around…”

“No.”

“See? It’s perfect.”

“No. Bo, Mama.”

For the next hour, any time Iz catches sight of my wrapped finger, he shakes his head. “No. Bo.”

It might have been less than an ideal fit, but I wasn’t giving in. “Mama likes it big. Look, it covers my whole finger. It feels better this way.”

“No, Mama.”

Finally, I couldn’t ignore the flapping bits of bandaid impeding my work and play.

“Well, looks like I’ll throw this away, Iz. It’s not working anymore,” I admit to Isaac, extracting my wounded digit and discarding the bandaid.

He makes the motion again, fingers splayed, back of the hand arched, then shakes his head for the last time and lets out a heavy sigh. “Bo,” he says, and shuffles off, leaving me alone in the kitchen.

Dammit. I hate it when they’re right.

Isaac, Christmas 2005 (p.s. Nice hair.)