Many-Layered Squeaker & the Agreeable Pipsqueak

This is a story from the kiddies’ grandma from before the squeaker got sick:

On one of these warm June days, she took both boys to a nearby playground. The squeaker has a swing set of his own, but he loves playgrounds. He particularly likes to pretend that he is a dragon leaping around on the playground equipment, and sometimes he’ll chase other kids around, snarling and holding up his hands like claws. When we are lucky, the other kids will think this is a great game, and they will either become a fellow dragon and join him in snarling and jumping around , or they will let him chase them while they shriek with glee (a response that the squeaker is happy to imagine is dragon-induced terror). When we are not so lucky (which is more often the case), the other children either back away anxiously, or, even worse, regard him as some kind of fruitcake who might not be all there mentally and thus choose to ignore him entirely.

So on the way to the playground, the squeaker’s grandma said that he was not to play the dragon game that day because she just hates to see him alienate other kids. He was sad about this and sank into a mopey little silence. Then, just before they got there, he brightened up. “Hey, Granny K, I know what I’ll do,” he said. “I’ll be a dragon who is pretending to be a little boy. That way, no one will be upset about the dragon.”

And so he was. A little boy pretending to be a dragon pretending to be a little boy...

The pipsqueak’s latest word is “OK,” which sounds more like “otay.” He uses it all the time now, and I find that it causes me to wander traps that seem to please him immensely, though he doesn’t quite plan them that way. He’ll point at the cookies and say, “Cookies?” which makes me laugh and say something like, “You want cookies for dinner?” And then before I can continue with, “No, we’re having lasagna,” he’ll look thrilled and say, “Otay!!”

I know, I know, I’m such an amateur. And I set myself up for this response over and over again, all day long. I’m just accustomed to being able to ask him questions that seem communicative but that are in fact meant to be rhetorical, because he hasn’t answered them in the past. By restating what he wants, I suppose I’m trying to model what he seems to want to say. (This makes it sound way more thought-out than it really is, but I’m just now thinking through exactly why I ask him these questions.)

Anyway, he finds it delightful that his every wish is parroted back to him, and that he need only say “Otay!” if he can just get his meaning across. Of course, then he is crushed when I explain that he can’t have the cookies for dinner, or go outside at that moment, or drop his toys in the toilet, or color on the refrigerator, or whatever, because didn’t I just ASK him if he wanted to do that??? Sigh. All my own fault.

As a side note, the squeaker seems to have recovered from his illness at last. He finally began to seem like himself again on Sunday evening. I think that was the first time in almost a week that he began running around the house with a foam sword, making “ching! ching!” noises as he whacked things. And he spent the afternoon setting up his dinosaurs outside in the grass and building them a swamp. The slow return to normal has been such a relief. I don’t know if he really had swine flu or not. It is widespread in our state, and our county has been hit hard. But in the absence of a test, we’ll never know for sure. The squeaker’s papa has had some of the same symptoms, but his recovery was much faster; he was only ill for about 48 hours. We don’t know if it was a different virus or if his adult body just handled the same illness differently. The pipsqueak has a bad cough but has never been lethargic or cranky. It has all been very odd, and not much fun at all.