Cannonball!

"Cannonballism is when one eats another of its own kind." - my six year old 

Bored

I'm sitting outside my dentist's office. The door is locked. I showed up almost an hour early. I wasn't sure what the commute would be like so I made sure I had plenty of time to spare. 

I grabbed an amNY paper on the way here. I just finished the crossword puzzle. I got them all right, of course. In pen. 

Anyway, I'm staying off my phone because it's low on battery so I'm now browsing through the articles. I might just end up reading everything. I remember when I was an intern, I sat at this editor's office with nothing to do, and I read the whole paper from cover to cover. Every word of it. 

I should have grabbed a Metro, too, but I was too lazy to look for one. I hope the dentist gets here soon so I can get my teeth drilled instead of being bored out of my skull. 

Mrs. Karate

Imagine going into a new elementary school and finding out your teacher will be Mrs. Karate. Well, that's exactly what happened to me in the sixth grade. I thought I could get my ass kicked if I didn't get the answer right.

She turned out to be a very nice teacher. And her name was Mrs. Crotty, not karate. When I was in her class, I became the spelling bee champion of the sixth grade. 

When I have another boy in class some underwear for our Secret Santa, Mrs. Crotty calmed everyone down. I think it helped them refrain from being too rough on me for that faux pas. She helped me transition from one school to another fairly well, I guess. 

In the seventh grade, she saw me standing in the hall one day. She said she really thought I would be an excellent student. My grades gradually declined, however. I believe ahe asked me to turn it around and make her proud. I never did. 

In the eighth grade, my brother came from the Philippines, and my mother could no longer afford the tuition. So I went to public school. And there I was able to slack off even more. 

Sometimes I would hang out in front of my old Catholic school. Once in a while I would see some former classmates. One of them told me she died from cancer or something. 

I felt sad. But I felt comfort at the fact that her soul had gone to Heaven with God. I strongly believed in that stuff at the time. 

The Devil you don't.

So tonight we were watching the New Jersey Devils game. After the commercials, they made this announcement for a promotion: "The Devils and Team Win Sweepstakes". Ryan sees it, and he goes, "Let's go, Devils! Boo, Team Win Sweepstakes!" And he kept repeating it over and over. 

For you see, he thought the opponent's name was Team Win Sweepstakes. He doesn't watch hockey very much. 

Blunderwear

Have you seen this commercial about giving underwear for the holidays? It's funny. It tells you whether it's okay to give underwear to some people and whether it's not.

Well, I could have used that advice on the sixth grade. I came to the U.S. at the end of August of that year, and I really had no idea what American kids were like. I barely spoke at my first school in Queens and then had to start over in a new school when we moved to Jersey City in December. I found out the class would be exchanging gifts for Christmas, and I was at a loss at what to get. 

One day at home, someone gave me their xmax present early. I don't remember the circumstances as to why I opened it right away when I got it. I think I had asked my mom for advice regarding my Secret Santa at school, and she had this brilliant idea: Why not just re-gift this present? Of course, the term re-gift was not yet coined at the time, and the idea of simply passing a present along didn't seem wrong or indecorous. 

So I opened the gift. It was a box of underwears. I don't remember the brand or who gave it. Some distant relative I had never met in the Philippines is my guess. I re wrapped it, put my classmate's name on it, and brought it to school. 

When the day came, the laughter and snickering took me by surprise. I thought it was a practical thing. I mean, after all, doesn't everybody use underwear? Lesson learned. Don't give a box of briefs to a boy you barely know in a new school in the sixth grade. Suffice it to say, I didn't make any lifelong friends in that school. 

Futudrama

So one day after work, we were sitting around the living room, and I decide to turn on the tv. I usually let my boy watch PBS Kids, but he was grounded at the time so he couldn't watch it. There wasn't really anything good on in the thousands of channels that were available. But "Futurama" was on at Comedy Central. So I was like, what the hell. 

So we watched it. But there were commercials. And I hate commercials. So I broke out the DVDs. And when I watch a tv series, it's hard not to watch the entire series. 

So for a few weeks now we had been watching "Futurama" after school. It's not exactly made for six year olds, but we made sure he knows not to say "Bite my shiny metal ass" at school. 

His favorite episode is the one where Fry, Leela and Bender become superheroes. One day he took some Lego pieces and said he was playing Futurama. He was singing "The New Justice Team" theme song and repeating the show's dialogue. 

We are currently at Season 4. The other day, he sees Richard Nixon's head and says, "Ugh. I don't like Richard Nixon. He's so mean and grumpy." We laughed. Then he made up a song about it. It was funny. You had to be there. 

One night, my wife went to do the laundry and Ryan and I watched while the baby slept. The episode was called "Jurassic Bark". It was about Fry's dog, who kept waiting for him after he was cryogenically frozen and never came back until he was thawed in the future. 

Usually he'll ask for more after the episode. But this time he just sat quietly, staring at the menu. So I asked him what was wrong. 

That's when the tears came. "Seymour kept waiting and waiting. And Fry had everything ready but he didn't want to clone him!" Or something like that. He was bawling. Poor little guy. He even reenacted how the dog got old and died. 

I just hugged him. I told him it was a sad story and that it's okay to cry. And then I wiped his tears. 

Cool story, bros.

Sometimes when my little boy finishes reading, I tell him, "Cool story, bro." Then he'll smile at me. And he'll say, "Thanks, Martin."

Everytime he hears "bro" he thinks of the Kratt brothers. He says, "You're Martin because you're bigger, and I'm Chris because I'm smaller." 

That's a pretty good show, "Wild Kratts", hosted by the Kratt brothers. They have some cool stories, bro. I let him watch it all the time, and he remembers all the details about the animals he see in that show.  I also let him watch "Zoboomafoo", and he loves that show, too.