Thursday, February 17, 2005

Bon Appetit

We're all eating lunch together today. Gloria and I are sitting at the kitchen table. Eli 3.6 has a little table of his own next to ours.

That's not to imply that Eli sits at his table while he eats. The table is mainly a base station while he conducts extensive investigations of the surrounding area; occasionally, he returns for a handful of food, then off he goes.

After several months of observation, I've decided that Eli 3.6 has two primary objectives while we're eating:
1. Make as much noise as possible.
2. Make requests for service at an unfillable rate.

Objective number one is usually accompanied by a cacophany of noise from any battery-powered device available. Objective number two is quite simple: if he requests service faster than we can fulfill those requests, we don't actually get to eat. This is strangely satisfying to him.

So I'm eating.
WHEEeeeeWHEEeeeeWHEEeeee. Eli 3.6, in an apparent emergency situation, has activated the fire siren on his pedal-powered fire engine.
"Eli, please turn that off," says Gloria.
"Turn off WHAT?" Eli asks, shouting to be heard above the siren.
"The siren," Gloria says.
"Oh." Eli turns off the siren.

Two seconds of silence.

"I won't use the siren," Eli says. "The horn is not so loud, is it, Daddy?" HONK HONK HONK HONK HONK.
"No horn," Gloria says. "Not while we're eating, please."
"Okay," Eli 3.6 says, somewhat dismayed.

Two seconds of silence.

"THIS IS PRETTY QUIET," Eli says. He's using the working microphone on his fire truck to amplify his voice.
"I could have eaten a sandwich in my car in the parking lot. That's sounding pretty glamorous right now. Why exactly did I decide not to do that?" I ask my lovely wife. She laughs.

Oh, that's right. So we could have lunch. As a family.

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