I had my shower interrupted this morning by my two-and-a-half-year-old son. I was hoping to get my shower in before he got up, but a repeated knocking at his door alerted me to Graeme’s wakened state. I opened his door and asked if he would like to wait in our bed whilst I showered. He responded, “Mommy? Mommy sweeping? Mommy? Mommy bed?” I explained that “Mommy’s not here” as she is currently visiting her uncle and aunt in Arizona. Well, this didn’t sit all that well with Graeme as he ran out of our room whining. I asked if he would, perhaps, like to sit on the couch instead. Graeme countered with, “Dee? Dee? Yabba?” I, of course, knew this to mean, “I will gladly sit on the couch if you would be so kind as to queue up an episode of Yo Gabba Gabba, featuring my all-time favourite personality, DJ Lance Rock. Please.” I obliged.
With Graeme seemingly appeased, I went about the business of my shower. I was just about to put shampoo in my hair when I heard Graeme calling out something. I couldn’t make out what it was over the shower so I called out to him, “Graeme! I’m in here!” A few seconds later Graeme came into the bathroom and pulled back the shower curtain, “Hone! Hone!”
“I don’t know where the phone is.”
“Hone!”
“Look, I don’t know where your phone is. Can I finish my shower?”
“No! Hone!”
This carried on for some time with me trying desperately to keep the shower curtain closed while Graeme kept pulling it open. Suddenly, I heard the faint tones of a synthetic guitar strumming the same chords over and over. My mobile! I’ve been using my iPhone as my alarm clock in the mornings and although I thought I had shut it off this morning, I clearly had not. I had figured that Graeme was going on about my wife’s old mobile that the kids use as a toy, or the house phone that Graeme loves to monkey around with. Instead, my son had been trying to tell me that my mobile had been ringing incessantly, making it quite impossible for him to enjoy his programme. So I quickly grabbed a towel and turned off the alarm.
“There. Is that better?”
“Ye-ah.”
It was at this moment that I wondered if, at some point in the past when Graeme had been badgering me about something-or-other, maybe I should have asked if someone had fallen down a well. I also realized that, together, we did some pretty good problem solving for first thing in the morning.
Good boy, Graeme!