Posts About Sg

Sg,

Yesterday, you asked me who would win a fight between Batman and Superman. Thanks to that cantankerous coot Frank Miller, I was ready not only with an answer, but the story to back it up. A few days before that, you were surprised to learn that Batman does not have super powers. So I think you were pretty impressed to learn that he was able to hold his own against Superman for several minutes.

Interestingly (or not, frankly), this is not the first time Miller’s TDKR has appeared on this site.

Sg,

Official state-sponsored Pre-K is out for the week, and we are taking the opportunity to let you drop in on your pals at your old daycare. Today, that meant driving past — and stopping at a red light in front of — the downtown Hooters on the way up Peachtree. The windows are covered with large full-color promotional clings featuring waitresses in standard Hooters wear.

You: “Why is she wearing that?”

Me, not quite yet grasping what you are talking about: “Wearing what?”

You: “Why is that girl wearing that shirt without a real shirt over it?”

Me: “Oh. I don’t really know. Maybe she… was doing sports. Before she came to work.”

You: “Yeah, maybe. Maybe she plays for the owl team.”

Me: “Yes, you’re probably right. Go owls.”

You: “Go owls!”

Sg,

You have been claiming to be afraid of the dark lately. Sometimes it’s clearly a ploy to gain a few more minutes before bed, and other times it seems legit (usually when you’re upset about something in the real world). Your mother and I take a kind of no-nonsense line when it comes to fear of the dark. I might handle it differently if you hadn’t been sleeping alone in the dark like a champ for nearly five years. But until I am convinced that we have a real, ongoing problem, the door to my sympathies on this issue is firmly closed.

I have been happy to see you take matters into your own hands by establishing a perimeter against things that go bump in the night. In the picture below, you can see the troll spikes that you have been using for the past couple of weeks alongside a new addition – a plush vampire bat named Sammy. Other fierce animals can be found at the foot of the ladder to your bed. You asked me yesterday whether crabs (oddly, one of the very few real-world animals that scare you) could get into your room, and you were relieved to hear my probably-true reply that crabs can scuttle, but they can’t climb.

When we last encountered your bed on this website, the girl-bed relationship was off to a rocky start. It’s not a topic we have revisited, but things have generally been fine.

Your bed is designed to be flipped-turned upside down (much like the life of a certain nobleman) so that the low bed with a canopy frame becomes a loft. AT and I have been wanting to flip it for a while, but we have been holding out for a certain comfort with your decision-making skills. We decided to go ahead anyway.

So we flipped the bed two nights ago. Yesterday, we went to Ikea and bought a bunch of other stuff to go in your room to give you more places to put away all of your junk. Some photos of your room refresh follow. Not pictured is your new desk, which we haven’t really figured out where to put. Maybe under your window? Also, we left the legs for the desk at Ikea.

I don’t understand it, but I love it. Three vignettes from a daddy-daughter day:

Me: Oh, hey, Amy Winehouse died this past week.

Sg: The “no no no” song lady? She died?

Me: That’s right. She had been sick for a long time, and recently died.

Sg: Oh no. [pauses] Did somebody write down her lines?

Me: Did somebody what? What do you mean?

Sg: Did somebody write down all of her notes before she died?

Me: I don’t know, but we have her recordings. So we can listen to the songs she already recorded.

Sg: We can still listen to her?

Me: Sure. [gives a three sentence overview of the pop music economy]

Sg: But I never got to go to her play, and now I can’t go to her play.

Me: You mean her concert?

Sg: Yes. I can never go to Amy Winehouse’s concert now.

Me: I probably wouldn’t let you go to an Amy Winehouse concern any time soon anyway.

Sg: Still, now I can never go.

Me: That’s true, and it is sad. But there are lots of concerts we can go to.

Sg: Yeah. At least it’s a good thing the people who sing “Under Pressure” are still alive.

Me: …Yeah, that is good. [changes the subject]

You made up a word this morning. You do that a lot, but I think this one may have legs:

flə-‘kä-kä - I’m not sure how you’d spell that. I just typed “flokaka”, but that looks horrible.

When I asked you what it meant, you said “horsefeathers”. It has stayed with me all day, but has morphed in my mind into whatever part of speech that one really bad “F” word is. As in “I understand you’re waiting for that parking place to open up, but do you have to do it right in the middle of the flakaka lane?”

Your favorite part of the temporary “mythical creatures” exhibit.

At the natural history museum, there is a book on a pedestal in front of a mural of the Pleistocene era that tells you about the various animals depicted on the wall. You began to briskly flip pages and said in a mocking “voice of authority” tone: “65 million years ago, all the birds were dinosaurs.” This is notable for a couple of reasons:

• When it comes to humor, you’ve so far been more a consumer than a producer. You’ve got friends (I’m thinking of Maddie in particular) who have been knocking them dead for a couple of years. But you have generally been satisfied with wacky. And I hope you don’t feel I’m being too harsh if I say that grownups generally are not amused by wacky for wacky’s sake. If I asked you to tell me a joke right now, I’d get something like “why is there a dinosaur with a suitcase on its head? That’s crazy!” Lately you’ve been adding irreverence to your repertoire, and I love it. I’m not sure who you were making fun of (probably me, now that I think about it), but it was some quality fun-making.
• Nice work on nailing the general vicinity of birds’ splitting from the dino family tree. We hadn’t even gotten to the dinosaurs yet, and I don’t know the last time we discussed the Cretaceous period.

You have been asking for these two songs in the car lately. One is about being unhappy in California; the other is about being happier elsewhere (“y dejaste tu pais por esto?”). It’s really more specific than that — both songs are really about L.A. Not that I think you get any of that. So far, Texas seems to be the only state you know of other than Georgia (thanks, Sandy Cheeks). For the second song, I thought you liked it for the picture of Neko Case on the album cover, but when the song played this morning I heard you in the back seat quietly repeating the word “tambourine” in varying tempos and inflections.

Here is a video for the first song, Van Nuys es Very Nice by Los Abandoned:

And here’s audio for the second, In California by Neko Case:

So there you go. Oh, unrelated: We were looking for things that start with the letter “S” earlier, and I laid out some crayons that are shaped like cartoon dinosaurs. I said “I dunno, maybe one of these starts with an ‘S’ or something.” You totally rose to the challenge by saying “Stegosaurus starts with an ‘S’.” and grabbing the Stego from the lineup. Even better, when it’s time at school tomorrow to show and tell your three objects that start with an “S”, the stegosaurus will be joined by a super-villain! I don’t know what kind of evil dealings a super-villain could get up to with a Strawberry Shortcake stamp and a stegosaurus, but it would be diabolical I’m sure.