…and a better version of your day. I should have been suspicious when I got home and Ben greeted me with, “I missed you! I had a great day! How was yours? Let me laud your safe arrival home with trumpeting fanfare!” OK. I made up the last sentence, but the rest is verbatim. He has been out of school for so long that I was out of practice with his spin doctor moves. The more trouble he gets into, the more affection and concern for our well-being he shows. This was a mild case, so I missed it. I won’t get into particulars, (partly because we are still relying on the sanitized Ben-version), but according to him, after the transgression at school, he offered an immediate apology when he saw the error of his ways. I didn’t even find out that he had messed up until Phil came home and told me that he had gotten a text message. It still beats the old days when Ben would claim amnesia. “My day? It was great! Well, the afternoon was perfect! My morning? Let me think…morning…morning… I think the morning was good…or maybe a little spotty… but I turned it around! My afternoon was great!”
This week we each constructed our tacos, and tales of our day, that were exactly to our liking. Ben helped with everything – there’s a fine line between sous chef and redemption – but in place of a recipe, we’ll show you how to build your best taco. (If you need help building a better day, we swear by equal parts denial, amnesia, blame, and rebranding.)
Those of you who know Ben, personally, know that he is pretty transparent. He is mostly kind, enthusiastic and fun. He wears his joy on his sleeve. Sometimes, like all of us, he is a stinker. Long, long ago, he developed techniques for sticking it to the man. His most impressive one was learning how to repeat our scolding words about a second behind us. The echo was unnerving. It sounded like this: “Ben Ben, give give that back that back to Sophie to Sophie. It isn’t it isn’t yours yours.” (Cackling laughter.)
When that wasn’t enough, he would wait until we had a good, long litany of complaints against him, and when he sensed that we were at the end, he tacked on his sister’s name to make it sound like she was the one being scolded. “Look, Mister. I’ve had enough. I need you to stand up, put on your coat, get your backpack, and get on the bus.” “Sophie,” Ben always added, to make her sound like the scofflaw.
When he knew you had him, dead to rights, Ben would get creative in his apologies. Just when you would feel satisfied that he had made amends, he would tack on the name of an inanimate object or two, thus nullifying the whole apology. “I’m sorry I pushed you…Fish.” Thankfully, he has moved past this stage, but still, when someone in our house wants to let someone else know that we’re mad, (but not too mad), we go with Ben’s favorite sequence, “Fish, Boy, Head,” followed by a little laughter. I think our favorite insult from Ben, that we frequently throw back at him, is “Disrespect-head.” Kind of says it all.
So, now that I have given you the complete low-down on the naughtiness of Ben and his creative language from past days, we leave you with a transcript of a conversation on Saturday. He couldn’t understand why we laughed at its conclusion.
Mom: Please take your shoes upstairs to your room.
Ben: I don’t think so.
Mom: BEN! (If you are a mom or a teacher, you know how to stretch a single syllable into two, and increase your pitch at the end of a kid’s name to make it a warning.)
Ben: I’ll call the cops. They’ll take you to jail.
Mom: Well, you better beat me to the phone, because I’ll call, and they’ll take you to arguing jail.
Ben: No, they won’t.