That’s my Boy!

January 21st, 2006

I got a haircut last Saturday (I am still finishing the massive recounting of last weekend– my plan is to finish it tomorrow afternoon) and today was Isaiah’s turn.

I was tied up with something till noon and we’d kind of planned to take him and Gideon by the barber shop on the way home when Ruth picked me up, but Gideon was asleep so we just went home instead and had lunch. This actually turned out to be the wise choice because as we drove by the barber shop on the way home (it was right on the way) I noted that barber Bob’s wife had just dropped off his lunch. They are both good barbers, but when they are at half strength the wait is twice as long.

Anyway, after lunch I took Isaiah up there. He read the dinosaur book he brought and drew in the notebook I fetched out of the van for him while we waited. I read car magazines.

Isaiah was the very next-to-last customer today. There were no other customers as we were about to leave, but a guy drove up and came in the door.

“We’re closed,” barber Bob called out, but he must have recognized him because he added “but I guess we can let you come in.”

This fellow had a rather voluminous and shaggy mop and I heard him say something about ‘flat top’ and ‘just take’er down’. Then barber Gary who had been sweeping walked over and asked the guy if he wanted him to do one side and Bob do the other as Isaiah and I were at the door.

“Don’t you want to stay and watch this,” Gary asked as I opened the door.

“It’s tempting, but I think I better get home,” I replied since I thought he was joking.

But he wasn’t joking. I looked back through the window as I got behind the wheel and saw the two barbers each with electric trimmer in hand shearing one side of that guy’s head. It was kind of funny so we sat there and watched till Gary finished his side and handed the customer’s head over to Bob.

A while after we got home, Ruth needed to go over to her brother’s house to let their dogs out since the brother and sister-in-law are in Kansas City this weekend. She asked Isaiah if he wanted to go with her and he did. Gideon was still asleep then, but just as Ruth was about to put her coat on, we could hear him waking in his room upstairs and he was waking in a cranky mood.

She went up to get him up and change him, but he was still grumpy when the two of them came downstairs. He had stopped crying, but was still unhappy when she asked him if he wanted to go see the two dogs at Uncle Mark’s house. He said he did, but was only slightly cheering up.

I, thinking purely of myself and intending to deal with them after she and the boys had departed, asked Ruth if there were any donuts left from the batch we got the other day. She said there were and asked Gideon if he wanted to split a donut with dad. This was not how I had planned to dispose of the donuts, but I figured I’d enjoy eating one with him and have the other to myself after they’d left.

It was fun having Gideon sit on my lap and eat the donut with me too, since he’s not much of a lapsitter and especially not in my lap. Usually the only time he’ll sit still in my lap is when Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends (a favorite of us all) is on TV, but he sat still to share a donut with me.

“Have ‘nother donut,” he said when it was gone. I had closed the box and he was trying to open it.

“Maybe later,” Ruth said as she got her coat “We need to get going, Gideon. Come on and get your coat on.”

They were gone about an hour and a half to play with the dogs and stop by the grocery store on the way home, but the first words out of Gideon’s mouth when I came outside and opened the van door to get him out of his carseat after they’d arrived home was “Have donut now!”

That’s my boy! I laughingly thought as I carried him inside.

But he forgot about it when Isaiah called him into the playroom to help him do something. In fact it’s still in the box in the kitchen. But I don’t think it’s going to be there in the morning…