My child is freakin’ brilliant.

I realize you’ve all heard me say this before, but hey, it’s the truth. She got her looks from her mother and her brains from me. Just don’t tell E K I said that… The brain part, I mean.

But seriously, The Evil Redhead and I ended up as some downright lucky parents, because the O-spring truly is brilliant.

Quirky, yes. Not quite Ally Sheedy from The Breakfast Club quirky, but then we don’t ignore our daughter like the parents ostensibly did to the character in that movie.

So, maybe with a little more luck on our side, the O-spring won’t end up being an “outcast shoplifter pickpocket with ungodly bad dandruff” who eats potato chip and pixie stix sandwiches for lunch.

Of course, knowing her current culinary tastes, potato chip and pixie stix on Wonder bread would probably appeal to her quite a bit. Hell, throw a few slices of bacon on there and even I might give it a go.

But, back to this whole language thing. Something I’ve never brought up before is the fact that our child used to be bi-lingual. Yes, I said used to be. She’s back to speaking only one language these days, although she does know a smattering of Spanish. But, back in the day she was fluent in two different languages.

Allow me to explain…

You see, we knew the o-spring was at the head of her class when she was still dumping loads in Pampers and falling asleep face first in her strained green beans. Well, to be honest we used cloth diapers and a diaper service in order to be a little more environmentally sound, but we won’t go into that. The thing is, even at that early an age, the child was fascinated by everything and couldn’t wait to assimilate any information she could possibly absorb, just like a dry sponge in a bucket of water.

However, we had no idea just exactly how far to the head of the class she was until one day when I arrived to pick her up at the day care.

She was all of about 2 1/2 years old at the time. We had already discovered that when the other kids in her age group were down for a nap in the afternoons, she refused to join them. Instead, she would spend nap time wide awake, and would put the time to good use by designing highly advanced, non-polluting mass transit systems using Legos and Lincoln Logs. Being quite the multi-tasker, she would simultaneously be explaining the theoretical properties of singularity event horizons to her caregivers. A couple of them even admitted to referencing the dictionary in order to understand her.

However, it wasn’t until this particular, fateful day that we discovered our child was a universal translator with delusions of grandeur. Well, actually, according to the stories we were told, said grandeur may well have not been a delusion at all.

It seems our child – who at the age of two had a vocabulary rivaling that of a college freshman as well as the comprehension and clarity of enunciation to use it effectively – also spoke fluent “toddler gibberish.” It actually surprised us to learn that she spoke this language, because she had only studied it for two weeks before moving straight into American English. However, the wide eyed care givers at the pre-school had been witnessing it first hand, but had never made mention of it. Until this particular day when our child had elected to use the ability to her advantage.

She was sitting in a time out chair when I arrived, her tiny little brow furrowed as she plotted her revenge against the system that had placed her there.

“What did she do this time?” I asked. I wasn’t all that surprised by the time out issue because while it wasn’t a regular occurrence, I knew she could be stubborn and temperamental.

“Inciting a riot,” the teacher told me. “And attempting to escape.”

“Excuse me?”

“Well, you know she speaks two languages, right?”

“Ummmm. No.”

“Well she does. English and Toddler.”

“Toddler is a language?” I had to ask because I hadn’t made it to that chapter in the parenting books. For the record, and much to my surprise, yes, it is.

“Of course.”

I took the teacher at her word, but was still a bit perplexed. “So, what’s that got to do with inciting a riot?”

“Well, you see,” she explained. “Normally we use this to our advantage. When one of the other toddlers is throwing a fit, or we simply cannot understand them, we send your daughter in. She gibbers with them, then comes back to us and explains the situation in English so we can address the need or problem.”

“You’re joking…”

“No, Mister Sellars, we’re serious. She’s an immense help to us. Until today.”

Again, for the record, she was serious. “The riot, you mean?”

“Yes sir.”

“Go on.” I was still skeptical, but willing to listen.

“Well, there was a particular toy your daughter wanted to disassemble and rebuild today, but we had to put it away because it made too much noise and it was disturbing the infants.” She motioned to the nursery next to the toddler classroom.

“So, that was the riot?”

“Oh no,” she replied, shaking her head. “We explained to your daughter that the toy had to be put away but she became very agitated and demanded access to it. She kept muttering something about missing a quantum event for a temporal dilation window or something.”

I nodded. “I see.”

I could actually empathize, as I had stopped the O-spring from building a time machine on several occasions myself.

“Anyway,” the teacher continued. “When we wouldn’t comply with her demands she went over to the other toddlers, gibbered for a few minutes, and then it happened.”

“The riot?”

“Yes. Several of the toddlers formed a barrier between us and the exit and began screaming as a distraction, while your daughter directed the others to build a tower out of the large blocks. Once the blocks were in place she climbed them and opened the fire exit.”

“No way.”

“I’m serious, Mister Sellars.”

“But obviously you managed to stop her and the other kids.”

She shook her head. “It wasn’t easy. Somehow she had managed to get my car keys from my purse, and if she’d been able to reach the pedals it could have been a different story…”

As I said, the O-spring doesn’t speak “Toddler Gibberish” any longer. And, of course, that was several years ago. However, her ongoing brilliance never ceases to amaze me.

More to come…

Murv

PS. Another “for the record” – While this story is obviously embellished for entertainment value, as usual, the core of it is entirely true. The O-spring really and truly did translate for the teachers at the pre-school for a period of about 1 year, which is something they found absolutely amazing and would tell us about regularly. And, one particular Autumn day she did, in fact, use that ability to incite a riot as a distraction, build a tower with help from other kids, and open the fire door.

I shit you not. My kid is freakin’ brilliant. 🙂

I think that will probably depend on how well I follow instructions from here on out. The dance thing, I mean.

You see, messages come in all forms and from many sources. In fact, depending on your belief system, you may even be convinced that you receive messages from beyond the veil between the worlds. And, sometimes those messages come along with a set of instructions that need following.

I suppose at this point you are wondering what messages from the great beyond have to do with the picture of Evil Kat’s shapely gams over here on the right. Well, to be honest, both everything and nothing. You see I’m not actually going to go on about being contacted by the dead. I am, however, going to go on about messages. In particular a message I received just the other day, and it just so happens that it has quite a bit to do with E Kay’s shoes.

In particular, her Mary Janes.

(BTW, I’d have put the whole picture up there, however if you have seen the revamped cover of Perfect Trust, for which this was one of many shots taken to create the final collage, you know things were far less pretty above the waist… Not gory or anything… You’ll just have to read the book if you don’t understand what I’m getting at… But, yeah, E K was one of the models… How cool is that?)

And, back to our regularly scheduled blog…

So, E K has several pairs of Mary Jane styled pumps. Dress up, work, leather, patent leather,  canvas, heels, flats, wedges, brown, black, and so on…

You get the idea.

I couldn’t begin to tell you about the fashion statement surrounding these, primarily because I have absolutely no fashion sense at all. I will pair stripes and plaids in a heartbeat, so I am definitely NOT the go-to guy where this sort of stuff is concerned. However, as shoes go these seem to work for the Evil One, and I am perfectly willing to admit that I think she looks pretty damn good in them. This latter fact may have something to do with one of those childhood memories, that being the little blonde-haired girl next door when I was growing up. We were all of about 7 and I was crushing on her pretty hard. Being the style of the 60’s she always wore frilly dresses and patent leather Mary Janes. They say you never forget your first love. Well, I wouldn’t call this playmate from my childhood a “love,” so I guess that old saying applies to crushes too.

So, there you go. Nothing sick or twisted, just Id, ego, and superego colliding to stir fond puppy love memories in my heart whenever I see the evil redhead in her Mary Janes.

Okay, enough with psychoanalyzing the Murv…

Now, the thing about E Kay’s shoes is that while most of them reside in her evil shoe closet, there are a few pairs that occupy strategic locations around the house – i.e. wherever she happened to take them off. Of course, her evilness is still more conscientious about her shoe placement than the O-spring. If you go stumbling through the dark in the middle of the night around our house, while traversing the living room you will trip over every pair of shoes the child owns. E K, however, does place hers pretty much out of the way. One such “out of the way” location where her feet become un-shod – and the aforementioned shods remain – is the general vicinity of her desk in our shared office.

And yes, Virginia (No, not you Doc… No, not the state either… I mean the metaphorical and collective Virginia) this is from whence I received a message. I just didn’t know it at the time. See below…

If you look closely at the left shoe you will notice a piece of paper lounged out on the insole as if it belongs there…

You see, the other day I rolled back from my desk on a mission to put something in the cabinets on the other side of the room. Since our office is relatively small our desks are against opposite walls. When I stood up to make the 4 steps to the cabinets I had to step around the shoes. When I looked down I noticed this bit of paper occupying the insole.

I didn’t really think much of it at first. Her shoes were sitting next to the paper recycling bin and since she is a shredding maniac I figured that in a frenzy of potential paper-mâché production the previous evening a scrap had escaped her evil clutches in a daring attempt at freedom. Unfortunately for the scrap, however, it plummeted into her shoe where it was overcome by odoriferous fumes and expired before it could get away.

Do NOT tell her I said that…

I continued about my task, tucking some papers into a cabinet, then returned to my desk. once again stepping around the pair of Mary Janes. This time, however, I noticed that there appeared to be writing upon the bit of paper. Again, I didn’t really think much of it until several seconds had passed and I was seated back at my desk. Some manner of subliminal trigger clicked, clanked, or whatever it is they do and I stopped everything I was doing. The image of the paper with the writing on it flashed through my gourd and I screwed up my face in thought as I wondered, “Did that really say what I think it said?”

Now I was curious. So, what else could I do? I rolled back, turned around in my chair, then leaned over to look at the scrap in the shoe (all while holding my nose, of course…) And, much to my surprise, it did in fact say what I thought it said.

“Leave Treat”

I’d heard “trick or treat” before, but never “leave treat,” although it definitely sounded like a pretty clear instruction to me. For a minute I started wondering if she was trying to get in touch with her Dutch roots and thought it was Christmas or something. But I came to my senses and remembered she is primarily Welsh and Irish, not Dutch.

Then for another brief moment I considered stuffing a banana into the shoe just to see what would happen when her evilness came home. However, since I wasn’t sure if that would spark some sort of Freudian dilemma or not, and I didn’t have any Vodka or Scotch miniatures on hand, I elected to simply laugh and snap a picture or two, because it was obvious to me at that juncture that this would be blog material.

Unfortunately, I get the impression that maybe I should have put some individually wrapped Dove chocolates in there or something.

Why?

Well, what you can’t see here is the knobby tread this pair of shoes has on the sole. The reason that is important is that I am now sporting a mirror image of it all over my face. All I know is that E K was doing a lot of unintelligible screaming while she was dancing on my head, but I did manage to catch a little snippet about her shoes being empty when she arrived home and when was I going to learn to follow instructions?

More to come…

Murv