Up and down and all around

A day with a 3-year-old will always have a wild fluctuation between good and not-so-good moments, but some days have neat little variations. When I was picking the little dude up from preschool, the head teacher/owner of the school once again complimented my boy on his clear diction and good singing voice. I know there is a possibility of this being standard sunshine being blown up a parent’s behind, but I haven’t noticed a lot of other parents getting the same kind of feedback about their child, so I’m going to put that in the ‘win; column. This is the same teacher who previously said, with a tone of amazement in her voice, “he is so smart”. Genius! I also heard him singing from outside the room, and it was a thrill to be able to pick my child’s voice out from the communal singing.

But like any genius or superhero, the little dude still has his challenges. Later on in the afternoon I was told “Daddy I peed a little in my spiderman costume.” This happened 3 minutes after I asked if he had to pee. Another reminder of his three-year-old nature was the drive to pick up mom, where he asked me if she was in every building, car, park and miscellaneous structure on the way there. Luckily I caught on that it was going to be a barrage of endless questions, so I took a pre-emptive deep breath and gathered up some good humour to answer ‘nope!’ each time he asked.

Oh my god, THAT’S why they make remakes

As I was cleaning the kitchen and planning a blog posting, I finally realized the justification for remaking movies. And so, I rushed down here (true story) and started typing.

Yes, money is a big motivator. The fans of the original can be counted on to show up to a remake, even if it’s terrible, so the lure of a pre-built audience is a tempting argument in favour of remakes. But when you go deeper down, there’s a more meaningful purpose.The remake re-contextualizes a piece of our modern culture into a frame of reference that can be understood by a new generational audience.

Back to the kitchen: as I was thinking about another post describing my cold war against the crazy parts of my brain, I wanted to talk about how I’m a creature of routine and habit, and disrupting that puts me into a tizzy (even if I don’t realize it). I planned on referencing the movie Rainman  “Definitely watch tv but lights out at 11PM. 10 minutes til Wapner”. And then I wondered if anyone reading this who was under the age of 30 would get the reference. You could argue that those people should watch the original instead of a remake, but the original has a specific existence in our timeline. It’s full of topical 80’s references that would have no real value today. A remake done properly would replace those dated references with markposts of our current age.

So there’s the cultural value in doing a remake. If someone comes along and does a decent remake of Rainman, then a whole new generation will add the memorable lines of dialogue to their language. Our collective societal memory is strengthened and added to by this process. And when we’re very lucky, a remake comes along that stays true to the characters but takes the art to a new level, like Batman Begins.

And for those few people out there who love my ongoing dissection of my own craziness, never fear. We’ll get around to that again. I’m still plenty nuts.

Language skills? Check.

I’m not worried about any elements of Max’s developmental progress. He’s not great at catch, sure, but that should turn around with some practice. And any shortfall in his basketball handling abilities is wildly overshadowed by his language skills. I will give  you an example. One of his new birthday books is ‘Scaredy Squirrel’ and as we went to read it today, he told me that he thought the ‘the part about antibacterial soap was hilarious’. Antibacterial?  Hilarious?? The number of words he recognized/read in the book was astounding. Combining his burgeoning reading skills and his new-found burst of imaginative play on his own puts him on track for happily reading on his own in the next few years.

I can hardly imagine what our evenings will be like when he can find a comfy chair and settle in with a big book while Ma and I read our own books. That will be something to see.

In other news, my mother has visited the grim specter of the future in the form of her lawyer, and there is going to be talk of wills and power of attorney and all the fun things that go along with it. This is another reminder that I’m getting older and I’m in a distinctly different phase of my life. I don’t know what this phase is, but the first few signs  have been hair loss and death talk. Off to a bad start, new phase.