Laura on Life

A mover and shaker

By Laura Snyder

[November 03, 2008]  My 7-year-old is a joy. He is the picture of little boyhood. He's got so many ideas and plans (some of them are even good ones). I know that one day he will join the ranks of other great movers and shakers, because moving and shaking are things that he's very good at.

After he came home from school yesterday, he told me he had learned how to whistle with two fingers in his mouth. I bent down, without thinking, and listened as he put two fingers into his mouth and blew as hard as he could. There was no sound except the sound of a large wad of spit exploding through the gap made by his missing two front teeth and landing in my eye.

I should've remembered that he had a gap in his cute smile wide enough to drive a Mack truck through. In fact, he had just pulled the second tooth out the night before. It probably wasn't quite ready yet, but this child is very motivated by money. The thought of one more dollar to add to his "collection" was just more than he could pass up. You see, the Tooth Fairy is one of very few sources of cash for a 7-year-old.

He thinks the Tooth Fairy is an old bald guy with funny clothes because the gold coin he found under his pillow had a picture of President John Quincy Adams. I thought he was merely curious about certain historical monuments when he asked whether we could visit the Statue of Liberty. That was until I discovered that the Statue of Liberty is on the back of the John Quincy Adams coin, and he thinks the Tooth Fairy lives there. No doubt, he'd like to sit down with the old bald guy over a mug of sugar-free hot chocolate and negotiate a raise.

He puts his "collection" of money in an old metal box because he keeps losing the stoppers for his piggy banks. He's got lots of "collections": a clothes collection, a book collection, a Hot Wheels collection, a Lego collection (there's the "already built" Lego collection and the "plain" Lego collection).

Once, we were in a store where they were giving out balloons to kids. I had to say no, because three kids with balloons in the back seat of my car spells an accident. I can't tell you how many near misses I've had when a balloon exploded in the vicinity of my eardrum on a challenging piece of road. So... no balloons in the car until such time as exploding balloons don't make noise or I am already deaf.

My 7-year-old was not happy about that rule and loudly stated his grievance.

"Aw, man! But I'm starting a b'loon c'lection and I don't got a single b'loon yet!"

Cars are his favorite things. He can pick a Corvette or a Mustang out of a parking lot full of cars. He obsesses over them. In fact, one day while we were sitting down to dinner, a police car stopped a driver right in front of our house. The blue lights caught our little boy's attention and he nearly hyperventilated.

"Look!" ... "Look!" ... "Look!" he sputtered, rising up out of his chair and pointing frantically. It was as if his body decided to shut down all unnecessary functions so that he could simply take in the astounding sight before him.

I could tell precisely when his mind started functioning again because he asked hopefully, "If the policeman takes that guy to jail, can I have his truck?"

That's our boy ... always moving and shaking.

[By LAURA SNYDER]

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