It goes with out saying that I love both Son #1 and Son #2. However, they both have an innate ability to challenge the amount of patience that a mortal man has been born with. That being said, I have a much higher tolerance for my spawn and their unyielding ability to drive me to the brink of insanity than I do for those of the world who routinely attempt to provide unneeded parental advice based on their uneducated and ignorant opinions. Generally speaking, I’m sure they mean good by their ‘suggestions.’ But strangely, I just don’t care. Moving on. For some universally meta-physical reason, I seem to follow my positive posts with negative posts. So, in an effort to not disparage those individuals I find increasing resistance to, let’s switch gears and try to break the aforementioned cycle of posts.

One thing I’ve been thinking about recently is Son #1’s ability to spin a yarn, describe a situation with the utmost lack of brevity, remind a parent of a promise or a commitment no matter how irrelevant, throw a parent under the bus with the other parent, give people a talkin’ to, and flat out lie. The kid has the uncanny ability to take a brief statement about playing in the back yard with his friend ‘shadowy’ and turn it into an epic 30 minute dissertation on the struggle of good versus evil in the outer-worldly confines of our fenced backyard. With Son #1, it’s all about the entire context of an experience and he spares no expense in describing each and every detail no matter the minutia or relevance. The item I find most interesting in Son #1’s recollection of the past is just that; his ability to look back and describe the entire context to everyone.

I don’t have one specific example to demonstrate this phenomenon. The reason is that it happens so regularly it becomes ubiquitous in everyday conversation with Son #1. The boy is hilarious. As I mentioned, he can regurgitate the past with the most dramatic flare. How does he do it? I have determined there are three key attributes to Son #1’s storytelling candor.

First, the dramatic pause. Ah yes, the speech characteristic painstakingly perfected in execution by none other than the great William Shatner. Son #1 will just stop cold turkey when he is telling a story almost as if his head is plugged like an old toilet full of too much toilet paper from an obsessive ass wiper. You then get the ‘ums’ and ‘uhs’ and you just want to pull the story right out of his head. Is it strategic? Well, I would say not. But I do believe it is well timed in regard to his ability to capture your interest and reduce your patience. Just get the thought out of your head for God’s sake. Second, heightened vocalization and volume control. Son #1 will increase the meter and volume of his story with the unavoidable approach to the peak point of emphasis he is trying to make. You always know when you have reached that point. His voice rises and somehow warps the words into some sort of alien language that is only slightly discernable by the most trained ears. Occasionally, he will throw you off by throwing in a brooding growl of the climax instead of the typical high pitched banshee-like squeal. He isn’t too predictable in his usage of either method so you need to pay attention to catch the peak. He will be watching. The third attribute is the most important. It is the glue that holds all of the individual units of his story together. Son #1 has found a mastery in stringing together thoughts, phrases, stories, and concepts through the use of the word, ‘and.’ He has a surgical precision in its use and finds that he can efficiently place it throughout a story to link everything together. Try it for yourself the next time you are talking to a co-worker at the water cooler. I think you will be amazed at the looks you will receive. Better yet, try it in meetings with customers, that’s what I do. Punctuation is wasted bandwidth in Son #1’s stories, merely speed bumps on the way to conveying his points.

I’d speculate that the story is happening so fast in his head that he needs to throw something at it just to slow it down so he can get it out of his head and into yours. It’s good times albeit tiresome some days. I bring all of this up because he and I were at odds this weekend. It had nothing to do with the storytelling but mostly to do with his thick head. This last weekend he just didn’t want to any direction. It got to a point where I had to ask him in a not so polite fashion to stay the hell away from me. I need to work on my political correctness. Because we fought a bit, I am feeling a little reflective on one of his finer points. That’s his unedited creative storytelling. It’s good stuff. If I can get one of these classic Son #1 unscripted tall tales audibly recorded, I plan on posting it here.


He is a good kid. Saturday was tough on both of us at times but it is somewhat sickly disturbing that he is a clone of me. And while it is difficult to communicate at times and we could easily make each other’s lives hell, it is very refreshing to have his jovial free-wheeling stories to reduce your blood pressure and refocus your heart on how passionate and imaginative he is.