lately every time my son mac leaves the house, it is with a handful of about 30 to 50 pages of paper, loosely stacked (and i use the term stacked loosely as well), a pen and a clipboard - which serves only as backing, with its clipping function unutilized. if he is on his way to or from school, then he is wearing his backpack, which is unzipped with papers spilling out of all gaping, flapping pockets. he may also be carrying up to 6 garfield "fat cat 3-packs" which are multivolume collections of the garfield comic strip. i say lately, but really, he has always been some version of this picture. when he was three, he wouldn't go anywhere without shaggy, scooby, velma, daphne and fred. they were small rubbery-like bendy figures just big enough that they wouldn't all fit in his hands. i used to have day- and nightmares about losing one of those meddling teenagers. after the scooby phase, i had to keep up with portions of a wooden track along with thomas, henry, gordon and james. if you aren't familiar with these characters, i envy you in a bitter, ugly kind of way.
the inner workings of his mind are a mystery to me (and apparently to everyone else). i don't understand how his shoes are always separated from their match. and i don't mean that they aren't side-by-side by the back door. i mean, one shoe might be in his bedroom and the other inside a publix bag in the backseat of the car. occasionally, i will discover that he is wearing his school clothes over his pajamas. if forced to provide an explanation, he will tell me that he was simply too busy to remove the pajamas.
he is an excellent negotiator. why just yesterday he said "mom, i will give you free beer if you let me on computer." his teacher, too, has learned to pick her battles. recently, after two weeks of constant badgering from mac, she allowed me to bring our dog, daize, to school to celebrate her first birthday. daize and i met the class on the playground and we all sang happy birthday to her while she cowered and peed a little.
nearly every other day, i discover collections of hundreds of tiny drawings or cut-outs of figures from pokemon, donkey kong, or kirby that remind me of the scene in a beautiful mind when jennifer connelly discovers russell crowe's crazy room. i have to laugh when i look at the accuracy of these tiny drawings - no detail omitted from princess peach's crown or dress - and remember therapists' concerns over his fine motor issues. he could diffuse a bomb with the precision he demonstrates with a wii-mote, but can't tie his shoes. i shouldn't say can't, because i suspect, that like removing the pajamas, he just doesn't have time for that.
