Where The Wild Things Are

This morning as I was lying there, slowly rising to full wakefulness, I heard my father talking to Handsome for a second.

"There's breakfast today."

"Huh?"

"At the Moose. There's a breakfast today."

And that was it. Kind of a long conversation, if you know my dad. So Handsome wanted to go to the Moose for breakfast.

So I'm sitting at the Moose now, my belly full of french toast and home-fries, watching Handsome doing what he really came here for: playing with the other children.

You can tell my child from all the rest, and for once it's not simply his size. There are one or two other kids here who are about his size. He's also, for once, not the only one running, jumping and making noise.

It's his thick hair, grown slightly long and shaggy, and at the moment unbrushed, wild and upthrust in multiple places and in multiple directions, like a haystack in a high wind. he didn't bring a brush with him when he came to visit me last night, and it's not like I own one. I haven't needed a brush or comb in over 12 years.

It's his sneakers, tied, but only roughly. The laces flop about, long enough to be tripped on, the knots loose and hanging from the sides of his feet - like they were tied by someone who did not know how, but modeled their attempt after seeing someone else's shoes.

It's his pants, which, if you look closely, you an see he is wearing backwards.

Yup. Pants on backwards. He says they're more comfortable that way.

When you add all this together - the hair a mess, shoes all screwy, pants on backwards - and then include the milk currently riding his upper lip and the food clinging with steely desperation from his chin, and my boy sort of gives you the impression that he has no parents but was raised in the wild by wolves, or possibly squirrels, and has snuck into civilization and is trying to pass for the day.

But not trying too hard.

That's my boy.

Talk to you later!