Wednesday, November 22, 2006

A Is For Aggravation

Max got a book recently from his granny. It's a Sesame Street Sign Language ABC book. Max loves it. A lot. He brings it to me for constant reading and rereading. I am thrilled by his literary enthusiasm, but to be honest, this book does not have a lot going for it in the plot department, nor is it rich in character development, nor are the illustrations particularly vibrant or compelling. Around the three-hundred and fiftieth time I read it with Max, it got a little old for me. When we put all our books and things out on our new bookshelves, I have to admit that I shoved this book deep into the middle of a pile of similar-sized Max-books, thinking that I had found a guilt-free (well, almost) way to rid myself of Linda the Sesame Street Lady and her pesky alphabet signs.

Alas, I was thwarted. I put all the Max books on the bottom shelf, so that he could take them out whenever he wanted. For the first day or so, I congratulated myself on this plan, since Max immediately commenced pulling books off the shelf, eyeing each one briefly, and then tossing them to the four winds of Heaven. What seemed like random acts of pile-making, however, turned out to have a focused and single-minded goal all along.

Guess what reared its ugly head around day two of the book-tossing? And guess who immediately abandoned the book-tossing to carry the ugly-headed item over to Mama for perusing?

I succumbed to the inevitable. I have been outsmarted by my son once again, and his intelligence makes my conscience-stricken self worry that he knows that I hid the book, and fear to try it again. My only hope now is that I will someday grow numb enough with boredom that the book no longer upsets me. Pray for me.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Can you tell me how to get how to get to seseme street.

Anonymous said...

Max is trying (very politely) to ask you to teach him how to sign. He knows (in his baby wisdom) that it helps with his language development....plus it is just pay back for the millions upon millions of times that we had to listen to the Unicorn song by the Irish Rovers.

Chelsa said...

Listen. The Irish Rovers were nothing -- NOTHING -- compared to that year and a half that Spider John Koerner was stuck in the tape player of the van. Also, I do not believe that Max needs any help communicating his desires. If anything, he needs to learn to repress them. Like a man

Ian said...

I'll not hear the Irish Rovers defamed! Sure, they can be pretty out of tune...and ya "The Unicorn" is not their best song to say the least, and ya they were the poor man's Clancy Brothers....what was I talking about again?

Raging Wombat said...

I'll pray for you, Chelsa, though I fear it will be for naught. Can you expect an English major to birth a child without a burning desire to study his letters? It was written in the stars long ago. In a galaxy far far away ...