Saturday, July 2, 2011

Priorities and Playing With Dad

After work today I went to the house that once was mine to pick up Handsome. It's the weekend, and he'd be coming to stay with me for the night. Two, actually, since this is a holiday weekend.
Anyway. When I got there, the first thing he said to me was "Catch?" In Handsomespeke, that means "Oh, Father mine, would you like to go outside and play a game of catch with me, your one and only Son? Oh, please say yes, Father!" I was having something to eat at the time, so I asked him to wait a few minutes. When my time was up, I asked him if he wanted to go out in his yard. or if he would prefer to go with me to my parent's house (where I am currently living) first. My parent's house has a bigger yard, the yard is flat, and we'd only be going there afterward anyway. We grabbed his stuff and headed out.
Once we got to my parent's house we broke out the gloves and found a baseball and started throwing it about. Handsome seemed to have difficulty catching what I threw at him and kept having to walk across the small street the house is on to retrieve the ball. And he kept looking left, down the street. Once he waved.
I shifted around so that I was next to the street, and could see what he was looking at. And waving at. There was a girl sitting on  bench out in front of a house down the street.
"Who's that?"
He shrugged, all nonchalant. "Oh, that's E-."
Now that I was where I was on the lawn, Handsome would throw the ball in my general direction, and then spend a little while with his back to me, keeping an eye on the girl. I'd have to wait until I had his attention again before I threw the ball back. Eventually I asked him "Would you like to go say hi to your friend?"
His face brightened.
"Can I?"
"Well," I said, "it's either that or one of these times I'm going to hit you right in the back of the head with the ball. Go ahead."
I found myself talking to a cloud of dust, and his baseball glove dropped out of the air where he had left it when he took off.
That's Handsomespeke for "Father mine, though I am having a great amount of fun playing with you, I have a chance to say hello to that pretty girl down the street. If you please, I would like to go and greet the young girl in question. Perhaps we could continue our game at a later time? Thank you, Father."
He wound up playing down the street with E- and a few more friends he has in the neighborhood.

Going to say hi to the girl down the street, and playing with some kids his own age, vs playing catch with his old man?
The girl wins, hands down. Every time.
The kid has his priorities, and what can I say? They make sense to me.

Talk to you later!

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