Tag Archives: little man

A Perspective on Priorities

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When I picked up the Little Miss from her daycare today, she had a bloody nose. Not a big deal, just a little bloody nose. She has a wonderful daycare and the caretakers told me what had happened that led to the bloody nose. Perfectly normal stuff.

I brought her home. Kelly and the Little Man were already home. The Little Miss had brought a rose for Kelly for Mother’s Day.

“Happy mommy’s day,” the Little Miss said, running into the house to give the rose to Kelly.

“Oh, thank you!” Kelly said. There was a pause. “What happened to–”

“She got a bloody nose at school,” I said.

The Little Man perked up. At nearly four years old, he is fascinated by blood.

I explained what happened. “When so-and-so’s dad came to pick him up, all of the kids suddenly wanted to play with the same toy, or something. I think they said it was a dinosaur. Anyway, in the commotion, whosits threw the dinosaur and it bobbed the Little Miss squarely in the nose.”

“Aww, my poor little girl!” Kelly said. The Little Miss did not seem bothered by this in the least.

The Little Man seemed to consider the story carefully and then asked what he deemed to be the most significant question.

“What kind of dinosaur was it?”

The Little Man and Zeno’s Paradox of Broccoli Eating

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This evening at dinner, the Little Man managed to illustrate a mathematical concept I first learned of in 12th grade pre-calculus: Zeno’s Paradox. The Little Man had broccoli on his plate, which he generally enjoys. He consumed all of the crowns of broccoli, save one. For the last one he decided to do something different.

First, he tore the piece of broccoli in half and then, with exaggerated motions, consumed the other half.

Next, he tore the remaining piece of broccoli in half and then, with exaggerated motions, consumed the other half.

Again, he tore the remaining piece of broccoli in half and then, with exaggerated motion, consumed the other half.

This went and and on and if I tried to capture it all, this would be the longest blog post in the history of blog posts. In fact, it would be an infinitely long blog post because as the piece of broccoli grew smaller by half each time, it was never entirely gone, nor would it be. Expressed mathematically, the limit of the size of broccoli approached, but never actually reached, zero.

And for some reason, I found this completely amusing and worthy of a blog post.

Art By the Little Man

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The Little Man knows that I like airplanes. I think that’s probably where he gets his fondness for aircraft. It may very well be an inheritable trait. It’s probably also why, when he did a recent art project in school, he decided to make an airplane for me. This piece is going on my desk at work:

Airplane Drawing

The Little Man and the Time Travel Paradox

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I am a fan of time-travel stories1 but there is a paradox about time travel that is rarely addressed in these stories. Sure, the stories tackle all sorts of thorny paradoxes (think Back to the Future), but with rare exception, they avoid the biggest paradox of them all: if someone in the future has invented the ability to travel into the past, why aren’t we seeing time traveler coming from the future?

Well, it may be that They Are Among Us, and it may very well be that my own little boy, the Little Man, is one of them. The Little Man is just a few months shy of four years old and recently, he has been telling us some interesting stories. It started out with vague references, like, “Daddy, when I was big, I used to go to work in a store.” When I first heard him say something like that I questioned it.

“When you were big?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“How long ago were you big.”

The Little Man pondered this for a moment and finally settled on a response. “Ummm, four–six months ago.”

He as become more specific lately. For instance, he recently announced, “When I was six, I painted the whole house.”

It seems clear from these discussions that the Little Man actually comes from the future, and furthermore, he lived his life backwards like Benjamin Button–at least until a few months ago when he started aging normally again.

Of course, I try to be encouraging. And indeed the nature of our conversations have changed lately. Instead of sitting around explaining to him all of the different years the Yankees won the World Series. (“Let’s see, the first one during my life was 1977. Then again in 1978. There was a dry spell and then 1996, 1998, 1999, 2000, and most recently 2009.”) I have started asking him questions. Like: “Will the Yankees win the world series this year? How about in 2015?”

The real question, of course, is: should I trust his answers? (You should hear what he has to say about the 2017 Super Bowl!)

Notes

  1. My favorites include Connie Willis; Blackout/All Clear and Doomsday Book; Robert Silverberg’s Up the Line; Jack McDevitt’s Time Traveler Never Die; Audrey Niffennegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife; Robert Heinlein’s The Door Into Summer; and Stephen King’s 11/22/63. ↩

Doctor Who and the Little Man

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I mentioned how the Little Man was sick yesterday afternoon. After his nap, still not feeling one hundred percent, he climbed into bed with me as I sat down to watch an episode of Doctor Who. Now, for those who don’t know, I’ve only seen a handful of episodes of Doctor Who. The first one I ever saw was not long after a TARDIS appeared across from my house. It seems that there were quite a few people out there who found it unbelievable that a science fiction writer had never seen Doctor Who. I tried to explain that I was not a fan of most television and movie science fiction. I’d grown up reading science fiction and that is what I enjoy. That said, people convinced me to watch one episode of Doctor Who and the episode they selected for me was “Blink,” which I enjoyed.

Since the, I acquired the first two seasons of the new Doctor Who with the thought of eventually watching them. I generally don’t have much time for television, and when I do, I’m usually looking for some form of relaxing, enjoyable entertainment. Last night, I was in one of those moods where that was just what the doctor ordered, so to speak.

So I put on “Aliens of London” from Season 1 of Doctor Who. (I’d already seen the first three episodes) and explained to the Little Man that this was a show with spaceships and aliens. For the first few minutes, the Little Man (who is nearly 3-1/2, by the way) kept asking where the spaceships were. Of course, we saw one crash into the Thames soon enough.

“Is that the Enterprise, Daddy?” the Little Man asked.

“No,” I said, severely. “Listen, it’s fine to make that kind of mistake in here when it is just you and me. But you have to be careful in the outside world. You could make some people very unhappy by misidentifying which franchise it is you are watching.”

The Little Man just blinked at me.

Of course, he kept asking for spaceships. I tried to explain to him that the TARDIS was a spaceship, of sorts. He was having none of that. With more than three years of experience in this world, the Little Man knew a spaceship when he saw one and the TARDIS was most definitely not a spaceship.

Perhaps the funniest moment came when the Doctor had cornered the (presumed dead) alien at number 10 Downing Street. They had the alien trapped and the creature tried to make his escape. It was a tense scene and the creature was about to reveal itself. Now, if you’ve seen the episode, you know exactly what’s coming. But I hadn’t seen the episode and neither had the Little Man. So when the alien was finally revealed, I sat there momentarily confused. Not so the Little Man. He burst out laughing at the top of his lungs, “Daddy, it’s a pig!”

I guess you can say that the Little Man’s first experience with Doctor Who was a good one. It cheered him up when he was sick and it made him laugh and feel better. And isn’t that what doctors are for?

My Cats-In-The-Cradle Moment Last Night

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When I put the Little Man to bed, I tell him that I will come check on him later. I usually wait ten minutes or so and go and check on him. Sometimes he’s playful, other times he’s on the verge of sleep. Sometimes, he’s philosophical. Keep in mind, the Little Man is almost 3-1/2 so “philosophical” is a relative term. Last night, on checking in on him, the conversation went like this:

“No school tomorrow, Daddy?” he said.

“Yeah, you have school tomorrow. And I have to go to work.”

“When I get to be a really, really, really big boy, I’m going to work, too.”

“And you can be whatever you want to be when you go to work.”

“Daddy, I want to be just like you.”

I was momentarily speechless. Then I recovered (slightly) and said:

“You can do that, too, but you can also be whatever you want.”

“I want to be just like you, Daddy.”

“That’s really sweet, buddy.”

That was a surreal moment. I told Kelly about it immediately afterward, but it still stuck with me this morning. I can remember telling my dad–when I wasn’t much older than the Little Man is right now–that I never wanted to call him “Dad.” I would always call him “Daddy.” Of course, that didn’t last, but I can remember the sincerity of my statement when I made it.

And I’m sure the Little Man was just as sincere.

The Little Man Versus the Dentist

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Yesterday, the Little Man had to have a cavity filled in a front tooth. He is three, so it is our fault that he had that cavity in the first place. We found a children’s dentist that came highly recommended and when we went there the first time, I think the experience was really good, considering the fact we learned about the cavity. We scheduled to get it filled and were given several options: they could calm the Little Man using laughing gas; they could use a “pampoose” to restrain him; or they could sedate him. Both Kelly and I objected strongly to the pampoose because it just seemed horrifying. The poor kid would be unable to move and he’d be frightened and likely never want to visit the dentist again. We chose the laughing gas to calm him down.

Turns out it was a bait-and-switch.

The Little Man was very brave and the laughing gas seemed to calm him for the first half of the work. But when it came to the second half, the various assistants and the dentist himself made it clear that the only safe way to proceed was to use the pampoose. We basically had no choice. And, of course, once the pampoose went on, the Little Man screamed and shrieked like you’d expect of someone interrogated by the inquisition. Kelly–who is the most calm and stable person I know–said she felt sick. I felt terrible, too, but all I could do was hold his hand and tell him it was almost over.

When it was finally over, he was hyperventilating, but relieved, I think. Both Kelly and I felt terrible, and while the dentist explained that this was par for the course, I wanted to throttle him. But it wasn’t his fault, I suppose. Kelly and I failed to ask a key question in that first appointment: how often do you have to use the pampoose after starting with nitrous oxide? My guess is that the answer would have been: almost always. If we had known that, we would have opted for sedation in a heartbeat rather than put the Little Man through that kind of trauma.

We did our best to make it up to him. We kept him home from school for the rest of the day, and took him to Target and let him pick out a few little toys. Still, my guilty conscience wasn’t assuaged and my dreams last night were littered with his helpless screams. He may forget the incident, but I never will.