Struggling with writer's block, here's a piece from last May.
Conversations with five year olds are always interesting, even when they’re repetitive.
They understand that there is give and take, but never that a specific subject matter has been exhausted. We were at McDonald’s. The circumstance of getting into and out of that particular establishment on this occasion is worth a separate treatment in the blog, but suffice it to say, I’d managed to order and get all three, the 5, 3 and 2 sitting in a booth with the baby and me on the opposite side. Our food arrived and my son took the occasion to notice the warning stickers on the entrance, NO BARE FEET, NO SHIRT NO SERVICE, and NO DOGS ALLOWED.
“Can dogs come in here?”
“No, see the sign? They don’t want fur on the French fries or the chicken nuggets.”
“Or the chocolate milk.”
“Right.”
“Can horses be in the restaurant?”
“Well, they’re a little big don’t you think?”
“What about monkeys?”
“Monkeys? Can you imagine Curious George and his pals in this place? They’d be playing with the soda machine and making a real mess.”
“I guess you’re right. What about….jaguars?”
Maybe it was the hardening of the arteries from the French fries but I was starting to lose steam on fielding these questions. “Um…they’re endangered and prefer the jungle to a fast food franchise?”
“You’re smart Mom.” The two toddlers are nodding in agreement with their brother. I sipped my diet coke. Maybe I could answer a few more questions.
“Monsters!” my daughter pipes up. The other side of the table is collapsing into giggles.
“Monsters? They’d eat up everything. They’d drink all the chocolate shakes! There’d be no fries or burgers or cookies for anyone else.”
“Oh…right. Okay…how about cats?”
“Well, if we let cats in, I think the dogs would get very jealous and then we’d have to let them in and can you imagine this place with cats and dogs inside it? What do you think would happen?”
An elderly gentleman walked by, watching this 20 questions grueling of why an establishment of this fine caliber would be so discriminatory against all God’s creatures, great, small, endangered and imaginary. He gave a little wink. “I think they should let bunnies in young man.”
“I like bunnies. They’re soft and we could catch them.” My son happily agreed. “They should serve carrots with the happy meal so we could feed the rabbits.”
Now, the manager of the restaurant had seen to it that we got to sit and have our food brought to us. I was very grateful given the number of littles I was seeking to corral. She came by at this point, “Can I get you folks anything more?”
“Yes. We want bunnies allowed to eat at McDonald's.” my son explained.
Not missing a beat and earning my eternal love, she responded, "Oh...well, they could but see, they don't have any money."
I'm glad that the world can still bend to the nonsense of a five year old boy. Now I just have to come up with an answer to his follow up question in the car after the meal, "Hey Mom, the rabbits could work for the Easter Bunny! How come you didn't think of it?"
The-thee-the-the-tha-that's all Folks!
