Friday, January 4, 2008

A Question of Semantics

Lyle's a pretty creative little guy. As many of you know, he has been obsessed with the movie Cars for, oh, about 6 or 7 years months now. Not as long as Baxter's dinosaur phase, but a sizable chunk of time nonetheless.

And so by now, he has gotten to the point where he talks about the movie but inserts random tidbits about his daily life into the scenes, just to mix things up a little. So you might hear him walking down the hallway and saying something like, "Remember, Baxter, when Tow Mater said to Lightning McQueen, 'You better brush your teeth now" and Lightning McQueen had a biiiig fit and said, 'No, I can't! My nose is running!!!'?"

This drives Baxter completely batty.

Because, well, THAT WAS NOT IN THE MOVIE! And when you are a 7-year old who is into THE FACTS, nothing's worse than the idea that this race car said his nose was running. I mean, really, where to begin? With his lack of a nose, or the fact that this scene did not actually take place?

He goes cuckoo.

A few nights ago at my parents' dinner table, Lyle got rolling. Personally, I am delighted by the randomness of these moments and I egg the boy on. So he was going on about how Doc said, "Don't eat Nana and Papa's Christmas tree, Fillmore...!" and I was, of course, encouraging this, when Baxter sighed, took a noisy breath, and leaned across me so that he could see the perpetrator's face from around the candles.

"Wait, Bax," I cautioned, holding him back. "Are you about to correct him on this? Because I want you to allow him to have an imagination, please."

Baxter considered this question for a long moment and then looked at me seriously.

"I'm not going to correct him, Mommy. I'm just going to teach him."

Ah. Of course.

4 comments:

Lori at Spinning Yellow said...

Excellent, Baxter! We have this same thing here except Jane's movie choice is either High School Musical (1 or 2), Lion King, or Mary Poppins. And Scott has to correct, er teach, her constantly. She likes to weave the Lion King into real events that already took place, like "the hyenas were mean to the girl and took her Halloween candy". I like the imagination, but I also see how Scott can't help but set the record straight. I mean hyenas in PA? Come on.

Marla said...

Very sweet. Cars is a cute movie. ANy movie can become a tad annoying after the millionth time. Right now M is stuck on Hannah Montanna. She has a wide range of films she has been obsessed with from Creature from the Black Lagoon to Cinderella.

Niksmom said...

How cute! Love the semantical hair-splitting by Baxter! LOL

Christopher Tassava said...

There's none of this disputation in our house yet, given that only 50% of the future disputants can, you know, talk, but I both love Julia's flights of imagination and deplore the way I'm always getting mixed up by them. One minute I'm Pooh eating honey and she's Rabbit, then suddenly I've erred by not yet becoming Tigger stomping on Rabbit's garden. Or, Lyleanly, going one step too far in reimagining a story, at which point I'm suddenly "teasing." Oops. Can I get a Teleprompter? Cue cards?