Early April "Kid-ism"

Was down at the Pastor's house yesterday trouble-shooting an electrical problem -- was a bad breaker. I had Caleb with me, he was holding the electrical meter while I checked for current, loose connections, and bad breakers.

I finished installing the new breakers into the panel outside and (since he will talk all day to anyone that won't tell him to be quiet) I told him when we went inside, if he wanted to help me, then he couldn't talk -- he could only listen. We walked inside and the Pastor said, "Well hello, Caleb. How are you doing?"

Complete silence.

Caleb stared straight ahead, grinned widely, and only held up the meter as he walked right on past. I'd forgotten to tell him he could answer questions! So I told the Pastor, he chuckled, and Caleb and I went to check the first outlet on the recently replaced breaker's circuit.

Everything was fine, as we prepared to go, the Pastor's daughter came into her brother's room (where we were working) and asked Caleb if he wanted to stay and play. (She talks almost as much as Caleb, and much faster.) He looked at me, I nodded, and told him that was fine, so he said, "Well, OK; what could I play with?"

She replied, "Good. You want to play -- let's play with my Barbies. I'll be right back, wait while I go get them."

It took Caleb a few seconds to respond, but he stammered out, "I don't play with Barbies!" before she got to the door.

The neighbor girl barely slowed but she said, "That's OK, I have boy Barbies too. You can play with the boy Barbies and I'll play with the girl Barbies."

He barely had time to blurt out, "No! I don't play with Barbies!" before she left.

So she said, "Don't worry, they're really boy Barbies! I took their shirts off so you can see. It's OK."

By that time I was having trouble finishing screwing in the outlet because I was (silently) laughing so hard. In the other room, the Pastor came to Caleb's defense and said, "Honey, Caleb doesn't play with Barbies."

So she returned and tried another tack. She pulled three cars from under her brother's bed and let Caleb pick one. That was right up his alley -- the Cars movie was on TV the other night, and he was pumped about race cars. He even let her pick which car she wanted to play with. Then she started in on him again with, "This is good, we can pretend the Barbies are in the cars. Here, I'll take this girl car, and you can take this boy car." (I couldn't tell the "girl's" and "boy's" cars apart, but she liked the Porsche better than the American made ones.)

Caleb had finally figured out she had ulterior motives and said something to her about racing the cars instead. She kept right on the Barbies-in-the-cars idea though, when she hit on a brainstorm. She pulled a Superman action figure from the toy box and said, "Here, this isn't a Barbie. This is Superman, 'Da da da daaaaaahn!' He has a cape and everything! Here, you play with Superman and I'll go get my Barbies."

(Singing the theme song was a nice touch.) By that time I was getting the faceplate started (and having trouble -- because I was still laughing), but Caleb had collected his thoughts. He said, "No thanks, I'd rather play with what I have here. I don't want to play with any Barbies." She continued, trying to convince him that action figures are MUCH different than Barbies, but he was adamant in his response. He wanted to play with the cars and he didn't want anything to do with anything remotely resembling a Barbie.

She wasn't very happy with his decision, but I got a kick out of the whole episode.