Or maybe obscured history associated with the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. The quotes are all referenced in the book.
Two surprising facets of 3.9-year-old Stuart showed up today.
First, he’s becoming a capable partner playing nontrivial videogames, such as PixelJunk Shooter. After only a few hours, he understands the game, fully participates in its tactics, and is self-aware enough to snicker when he is occasionally caught hiding his game character in a safe place to avoid combat. If Juimiin does not put the kibosh on video game time, he may well match me in the silly game within weeks.
Second, he seems to be aware of meta levels of trickery. He had a minor foot mishap, after which he was exaggerating the peril and pain of the appendage. After I explained to him what hypochondria was, he laughed, but did not whittle his sympathy-syphoning manoeuvre. A few minutes later, I tried to trick him into using his “bad” foot. But he didn’t fall into the trap. He looked at me with a beaming grin. He was not fooled. And he knew that nor was I.
Our home is in a kid-laden neighbourhood, and we received a typical number of candy-beggar visitors, perhaps a hundred total. Most houses were decorated with pumpkins, skeletons, miscellaneous goo, but we’re too lazy (or shall we say, unconventional?) for that. Instead, I repurposed our main entrance’s shade/screens into a proper screen.
With the help of this little widget, and flickr’s web slideshow function, we showed a loop of a couple hundred halloween-themed images. I was pleasantly surprised at the absence of grossly family-inappropriate material, so didn’t have to focus on the imagery, only on shovelling the candy out the door.
Oh yes, and yelling “boo!” at the kids. If entranced by the big “TV” up on high, the experience of seeing a middle-aged dude crouching on the floor shouting at them must have been pretty jarring. They still took the snacks.
