13 April 2007

Stalled Sailing Career

Due to a variety of converging confluences, I have not sailed since some time around the dawn of time. I go to the boat fairly consistently to make sure docklines are fine, that it is above water, and to commune. I have no way to solve this problem in the immediate future.

So I'm going the "daddy blog" route for a while.

My toddler son and I were killing time waiting for my beautiful wife to finish her dentist appointment last week. So we walked around a strip mall, trying to tire him out. After a couple of laps I noticed that he's walking funny, sort of tiptoeing on his left foot.

Ah, what the heck, we decided take a break and go into the Pay Less Shoe Store. I've learned my lesson that he'll linger for an eternity in the kids' shoe section so we went over to Men's Size 11 to take a look. A nice sales-lady comes by and asks how we're doing, we reply, "great, just looking." She goes away.

My boy gets that look in his eyes, the one of deep concentration and sincere interest in body functions. He's doing business. I know the drill...the only thing to do is wait him out and take a look at shoes.

Two more minutes in, the sales lady comes back and asks how we're doing. We are still at the exact same spot, nobody has moved. Same reply, "fine, we're just looking."

Two minutes later, she comes back. "do you need help with sizes?" My reply, "nope, 11 is perfect, still looking."

I try to pick him up to go change him, nope, he's still busy.

Two more minutes later, she comes back, clearly worried. All I could do was look at her, smile and say, "he really likes it here."

At this point, I'm worried she's going to call security or the white van. But there's no way we're budging.

Finally, about ten minutes into the process, he appears done, solving the dilemma of how to say, "you have a nice store here and I have to tell you my boy feels very comfortable here".

2 comments:

Tim Coleman said...

Many years ago when my eldest son was about 4 or so his grandad (my Dad) took him shopping and went a hardware store and whilst they were busy looking around my son informed Grandad that he wanted to go to the toilet. Grandad said to wait a minute, and then re-imersed himself in his shopping activity and promptly forgot.
A short while later my son told grandad that he was ok and that he been to the loo, and pointed to the sales mockup bathroom and said "I used that one".
Grandad beat a hasty retreat with grandson in tow. We laugh about it now. (I'm just glad it wasn't an No2!)

"Raps" said...

Priorities man! Its Ok. The boat will always be there.... unless it sinks... or gets stolen or something.