Family

1) "Put your shoulders back," my mom always told me. I've been told more than once I have poor posture. But I was surprised during a pause on a hike with a bunch of retired people when one lady came right over and scolded me, placing one hand on my back and the other on my shoulder and pushing me upright. "Who wants scoliosis?! Stand up straight! Shoulders back! No, I say it because my sister had her back cut open at the age of 40 so that they could glue all over vertebrae back in place. You are tall. Be tall. Stand proud. The ladies like a tall, proud man." And then the jokes began about her being my mother. "It's true, my mother always said the same thing," I added.

2) The other kid thinks that if you have a belly, you must have a baby inside. He comes over to me and to his brother and lifts our shirts to pet our bellies saying, "Baybeeeee." We try correcting him--no baby here, scientifically impossible--but it's no use. I caught him the other day gazing at a magazine with a pregnant lady in her underwear on the cover. He was caressing her overgrown stomach gently and I heard him softly mutter, "Ders a baybee inder."

3) The most amazing thought of parenthood is imagining the perspective of a two foot tall toddler. There's good reason he's got a look of wonder in his eyes when he cranes his neck to look up at me. I'm three times the size of him, which means it'd be like me looking up to a man who is 18 feet tall. And can you imagine an 18 foot tall giant picking you up? Swinging you around by the arms? Putting you on his shoulders? Throwing you up in the air? Wildly inconceivable. 

4) I picked up the kid from school and we ran an errand. On the way home, looking out the car window, he said out of nowhere, "Papa, I want a puppy named Bubbles. Is that a good name?"
"Bubbles? Um...yeah."
"You like it?"
"Yes, it's a good name. Bubbles the dog and Banjo the cat. Bubbles and Banjo."
"Yeah," he said in a daydreamy tone, still gazing out the window.
"Bubbles and Banjo. Best of friends."
"Yeah," he said in the same sigh of a tone, as though he were wishing it into existence.