Don't interrupt me

Just shut up.

Not forever. Not as a rule. Just as an occasional courtesy. Consider it a conversational exercise. Take those flapping, meaty lips of yours, those clicking teeth and your grunting throat, and make them still, just for a three-count.

Take a breath. Consider your next blurt, before you blurt it. Hey, while you're at it, take a real chance and listen to what I have to say for a change, you monopolizing boor.

By now it goes without saying that I don't like being interrupted. To tell the truth, I actually enjoy a conversation so energized that one conversant will excitedly interject something before the brainwaves lap against his mind's shore and obliterate the elusive thought written in mental sand. I dig that.

What I don't like is when I can't get an entire sentence out of my mouth before I am cut off, time after time, until I find myself at the end of a "conversation" without having completed a thought. It assumes I have nothing useful to contribute. It assumes your thoughts are the only ones that matter. It assumes I won't flick out my knuckles and rap you one in your relentlessly-vibrating throat, just to listen to the comparative silence between your ragged wheezing.

So, take a quiet breath. Smile and nod, even if I go on a bit. It's the polite thing to do. I'll shut up eventually, and it'll be your turn.

Big boy bed

My wife stopped at Wal-Mart the other night and whilst shopping for a few basic items, she couldn't resist buying some furniture. What fiendish grip is it that Wal-Mart has upon its patrons?

She brought home a traditional bed (that is, not a crib) for my son. It is a parent's way of saying: "I think you're old enough not to roll out and crack your head open in the middle of the night." He's very happy with it.

For a while at least, he goes to bed again of his own free will. Even more importantly, he can get up on his own, but he doesn't quite get that yet. Sometimes when he wakes, he'll lay in bed and whine about his predicament, rather than simply disembark the mattress and begin his day. Very old-school thinking, my boy. It's adorable to invite him to extricate himself from his self-imposed prison. Once free he's quite jolly, and if we're both home he comes to noodle around with us, before we all get up to begin the day.