Sweetie? Pumpkin butter? Love? Mommy doesn’t want to talk about this right now.
Why?
Well, first of all, Mommy is driving. At breakneck pace to get you home on time after a long ass day of doing everything you want. Mommy is trying to concentrate. Also, in rolling my eyes at your question, the same question you’ve been asking all day, and the same freaking question I’ve answered, I swear to god, twelve times already, I managed to lodge a contact lens somewhere deep in my brain. Okay, honey? So not only am I gouging my eye out trying to get to the lens, to relieve the pain and fix the fauceting from my eye and potentially restore my freaking kind of necessary vision, there is a thin piece of precisely machined plastic wedged into the Why Is Harold with the Purple Crayon Happy When He Gets in the Boat part of my brain. So it’s inaccessible at present, lovekin. I also can’t freaking see anything, doodlebug. Mommy is blind, Mommy is tired, Mommy is flying home HOPING TO GOD that Daddy is home so she can drop your ass off for, like, the twelfth time in your entire 1185 day life that she can avoid bedtime, so I can go feed a pair of cats who, it turns out later, are only going to hiss at me because they’re PISSED their Mom isn’t home. That’s not my fault. Traffic is not my fault. The sun in your eyes is not my fault. My not being willing to answer the same emotive question thirteen times in one day is, I swear to all that is holy, not my fault. I was only given enough patience to give twelve answers. Blame your grandparents. I can guarandamntee you they only answered eleven times, because they roll their eyes now every time I answer you twelve times in a row.
So please. I’ll say this again, politely. Please put a sock in the exploring-the-emotions-of-cartoon-characters BULLSHIT while I try to get us home safely. There are, like, fourteen freeway interchanges between grandma’s and home, and I think we’re gonna wind up in the wrong county if I don’t pay attention right now.
Ah, shit, now we’re on the bridge. Did you just ask why is there water? Because we’re on a bridge. Why is it a bridge? Tell you what. You take your purple crayon and think fast and soon we can be climbing aboard a trim little boat, too, and you can tell me why that makes you happy.
Mmmmmkay?
6 Comments
10 July 2009 at 4:07 am
Damn that Harold and his excellent, unexplainable drawing skills for one his age.
(Awesome post, BTW. Sorry it had to come at the expense of your sanity. The best ones seem to though, don’t they?)
10 July 2009 at 7:42 am
Nice! “…there is a thin piece of precisely machined plastic wedged into the Why Is Harold with the Purple Crayon Happy When He Gets in the Boat part of my brain,” is MY quote to the day!
10 July 2009 at 1:38 pm
I knew there was a reason that I don’t have any Harold and the Purple Crayon books.
10 July 2009 at 2:54 pm
Harold has always been my favorite. There are puns, there is a healthy sense of humor, and it’s awesomely respectful of the magic of creativity. But my kid can make anything benign into a freak-fest of questions I simply cannot answer. This morning we walked past a truck. “Mommy, why it that a dump truck not a garbage truck?” Um, because it is? What the f-ck kind of question is that?
11 July 2009 at 1:14 pm
This is awesome. This needs to be in your book.
11 July 2009 at 9:00 pm
Naptime, you’ll never guess how many times I use the old standby “because God made it that way.” Why can’t sharks breathe water?-After a five minute lesson on gills. I completely understand your pain. I haven’t actually seen a Harold book since I worked in a school. Perhaps I should get them . . . and then send all questions your way ;-)