Friday, December 11, 2009

The horns of the dilemma

My little boy Runymede is a bit under the weather today. His temperature this morning was over 100, which is too high for him to go to daycare. I went into work early and left early, while his mom stayed home until I could relieve her and she could work a late shift at the clinic. She also made a pediatrician appointment for Runymede at 3:30 p.m., and I brought the little guy in. The PA's diagnosis was ... something viral. Which was actually good news by omission: it was not an ear infection, not H1N1, not strep throat, not anything terribly scary. Oh, also he has eighteen-month molars coming in which is probably making him extra-strength cranky. But again, we'll take those run-of-the-mill tribulations any time.

Once we were done at the pediatrician's I took Runymede to the book store just to wander around a bit, since the poor kid had been cooped up at home most of the day. He had fun pointing out all the cars and trucks on the covers of various books and I had fun just following his stumbly random path around the store. At one point I picked up a Dungeons & Dragons box from the shelf, and a second later Runymede was lifting his arms for me to pick him up. So I picked him up and showed him the box.

At some point I'm going to have to start worrying about my geeky hobbies and their inherent weirdness and various grotesqueries as potential nightmare fuel. I mean, I love horror movie posters and dragon t-shirts and all, but I don't want to traumatize my child via negligent exposure. (Not that this is necessarily 100% avoidable. I still vividly remember having nightmares as a tot about gorillas, and I don't think my parents should have been shielding me from zoos.) In any case, Runymede is still pretty fearless. The D&D box had a monster figure in it, a big beastly heavily-armed minotaur which was specifically designed to look menacing. I watched Runymede carefully to see if he would have any kind of upset reaction to it. He pointed at it and said "Moo."

That's my boy.

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