Monday, November 19, 2007

I Totally Forgot

I can't believe I didn't even mention the best part of going to see Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium, which was the fight we saw.

In the parking lot.

After the movie, we went out to the car, and as I was buckling Eli 6.3 into his booster seat, I noticed a man sitting in his car. What was unusual about this was that he was actually in the lane between parked cars, so he was parked in the middle of the road, basically. The car was running, and he was looking out his opened window and staring. I followed his glare and saw a woman standing in a parking space with her arms folded across her chest.

The parking lot wasn't crowded, so it's not like she was saving him a space. It was some kind of bizarre parking lot standoff, and neither of them were saying anything.

"Dude," I said, "I think those people are having a fight."

"A fight? Where?" he asked.

"Right there," I said, nodding to the car (which was only about twenty feet away from us). "I think that lady is mad at him and won't get in the car."

"She's just standing there?" he asked.

"Looks like it," I said.

"That is AWESOME!" he said.

"We're definitely coming back to check on this " I said (we had an errand to run in the same shopping complex).

Right as we started to pull away, the woman pulled out the nuclear option. She squatted in the parking space.

"Dad, she's SQUATTING!" Eli shouted, laughing. I know, it was a fight, but the looks on their faces really did make it funny. They were glaring at each other like cartoon characters.

We came back fifteen minutes later.

"Do you see her?" Eli asked, scanning the parking lot.

"Look in the trees," I said. "Maybe she climbed one and won't come down."

"Dad!" Eli said laughing. We looked, but they were gone.

Hopefully she's not squatting on their driveway right now.

Eli watched Alvin and the Chipmunks Meet Frankenstein on Friday night. It had Frankenstein, and a theme park, and a mad scientist, and the chipmunks were trapped inside for a while. On our way to breakfast Saturday mornining, he was asking whether the chipmunks had really been in danger. "Well, it was a cartoon," I said, "so it's not real."

"I know that," he said patiently. Talking to grown-ups can be frustrating.

"Inside the movie, though, I don't really think they were in jeopardy," I said.

"WHAT?" he said. "In a theme park? With a mad scientist? OF COURSE THEY WERE!"

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