Some mornings are just not funny.
If you want to know how to reduce your 4-year-old child to total silence for an extended period of time, start his morning with a sharp reprimand (you come when I'm talking to you!), and the seizure of his beloved new Power Rangers motorcycle given to him just 24 hours earlier by a friend.
That's how Ian's and my morning walk got kicked off. Then we walked to school in the gloom of a January morning, one that can't seem to decide if it's spring yet, in total and complete silence.
And I learned something: I don't like silence as much as I thought I did.
He didn't want to hold my hand. He didn't want to walk near me. I even got a "leave me alone!" plea, which sucked, while I was pretending I could give a damn.
So on the way to school I try to use those few quiet minutes to broker a truce. If the morning walk has taught me anything it's that during that walk, Ian is like a tourist and I'm like a billboard in Times Square. With neon and animated bubbly things and moving cardboard parts. He can't miss my message. He's a captive audience and I'm an obtrusive advertiser. So be it.
"Ian, do you know why Mommy was mad this morning?"
Silence.
"Ian?"
"Because I wasn't listening," he says, talking over the chapped flesh of his thumb, which seems to be continually renewing a monthly parking pass inside his mouth.
"Right. Do you know how to listen?"
"Yes."
"OK, then. We're going to work on that, right?"
No response. Suck suck suck. Like that baby in The Simpsons. Only mine is wearing silver Adidas and a winter hat with Spiderman lunging across the front of it, throwing his web.
By the time we get to school, Ian gives me the standard issue hug and kiss and I blast my last public service announcement: "Don't hit anybody, please," I say.
OK, OK, OK he says, trying to ignore me, but I know he won't, or rather can't, at least for now. Kinda like TV advertising before there was TIVO. You just gotta sit through it.
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