Kids’ Quotes

Now, Later, Soon

Sophie: I’m gonna watch Snow White!
Me: Wow, you’re gonna watch Snow White again?
Sophie: Yeah!

She suddenly remembers she just got new studio portraits, and cuts me off from my reply.

Sophie: I got pictures!
Me:  I know, I saw them!  Do you know that I’m gonna come see you later on your birthday?

A thud is heard as the phone falls to the ground.  Uh oh.

Sophie (yelling in the background):  BEN’S COMING!

Uh oh.  I hear rapid footsteps as she runs to the window to look for me.  Uh oh, uh oh. I just accidentally lied by saying I was coming and then not showing up right away.  Blërg!

Lesson Learned:  Do not tell Sophie something will happen “later” unless it is imminent.

That’s How I Know I Hate Prison

Kid: “I hate college.”

Guy: “Are you gonna be a college dropout?”

Kid: (indignant) “How am I supposed to know?  I’m eleven.”

– Overheard on the Green Line

You may decide which of these movie quotes this real-life experience most resembles:

Option 1:

Guy: “What’s going on?”

Eric: “I don’t know.  But could you do us a favor and try to catch the lemur?”

Guy: “I don’t know how to catch a lemur.  I’m a dentist.”

Eric: “Well I don’t know how to catch a lemur – I’m nine!”

– Mr.  Magorium’s Wonder Emporium

Option 2:

Joey: “There’s gotta be a way that we can stop this from happening.  Ooh!  Okay, you come with me and you tell them that the house is haunted!”

Mackenzie: “What are you, eight?”

Joey: “Okay, let’s hear your great idea.”

Mackenzie: “I don’t have any great ideas.  I am eight.”

– Friends

It’s Like a Bleg, But Without the Interactivity

Concluding the mini-series of quotes from my nieces, we have these three from just this weekend.

Jess: (contemplative) “I want to paint my nails.  (beat)  Do you want to paint my nails?”

Jess: We should make a scrapbook together!
Rachel: (enthusiastic) Ooh, yeah! (suddenly accusatory) Maybe when you give me my scrapbook stuff back!

Jess: (hopefully) “Can I have all your mints?  And you can’t have any of mine, in case you were wondering.”

Then, when I could no longer bear to let these gems (many of which remain unprinted) fly about the room without someone writing them down, I went to get my computer.  This prompted:

Jess: Wait, what’s a blog?

I never did come up with an answer.

Hot Dog Soup

Jessica (author of the best retort ever uttered) has always had a sarcastic streak.  At the age of about four, she sat down to lunch with her sister Rachel – Jess with a plate of bite-size hot dog pieces, and Rachel, who hated hot dogs, with a bowl of vegetable soup.

Having two different meals apparently prompted a moment of confusion.

Jess:  Whatcha got there?  Vegetable soup?
Rachel:  Yep.

Jessica contemplated this a moment, took another bite of hot dog, and then dumped the rest of her plate into her sister’s bowl of soup.

Jess:  Whatcha got now?  Hot dog soup?

Maybe Someday You’ll Have Eyes Too

A few years ago we went to see the Fourth of July fireworks at Lake Champlain – held every year on the third of July.

Some people arrive early in the evening and claim space on the grass with their blankets and picnic baskets, but we chose to walk around and get ice cream and enjoy the atmosphere.  We found a row of people standing at a railing just before the fireworks began, and joined them.

Immediately a delegate from the lawn squatters behind us approached and suggested – all but insisted – we might want to sit when the fireworks started.  Gesturing at the people around us we suggested there’d be little chance of that.  Besides, it’s not like we’d be blocking the view of the sky.

We heard her report back, quietly, “They’re not gonna move.”  A woman immediately shouted up to us – me, my brother, his daughter, and our two nieces, all clumped together – “Maybe some day you’ll have kids and then you’ll understand.”

Without missing a beat, my niece Jessica whipped around and shouted back, “What are we, the next door neighbors?”

With that, I introduce a mini-series of quotes from my nieces, and from Jessica in particular.

Speaking of Public Key Cryptography…

In the IT front office, a woman carries on a conversation about how to choose a new password, while her small child watches.  Then, out of nowhere:

Girl, age 5: This one time, my daddy had a hole in his pants, and I could see his underwear.

Colleague: And did you fix the hole?

Girl: Nope.  We threw out the pants and got new ones.

Sophie is Cute (Exhibit D)

Sophie was very excited at my arrival when I first got there.  As she walked in the door I could clearly here my name overlaid with tones of excitement.   Ben’s here!

Until she saw me.

Then she immediately ran upstairs to her room as fast as she could go and refused to come out until I was gone… which wasn’t really likely to happen.  When she did have to come downstairs (to eat, for instance), she refused to take her eyes off me, certain, I think, that if she weren’t watching me I’d immediately transform into a drooling monster and destroy her.

When I was still there the next morning, she resigned herself to being in the same room as me, though any time I went anywhere near Mommy she ran over and pushed me away, yelling, “No!  My mommy!”

By the third day, though, the tables had turned.  Anytime I went anywhere near Mommy (or anyone else) she still ran over and pushed me away… but now yelled, “No!  My Ben!”

By this afternoon I had a voice mail that said, first, “Why won’t Ben talk!” (sorry, Sophie, I wasn’t really on the phone) and “Come back!”  Hehe!  I win!  And that’s very cute.

Sophie is Cute (Exhibit C)

Sophie came running in Wednesday morning just as I was waking up and decided it was time to become a monster – a routine activity on all lazy mornings.

She sat quietly for a long time, though, shooting me furtive quizzical glances, before eventually asking, “Ben glasses?”

“Yep. I wear glasses!”
“Where?”
“I took them off when I went to sleep.”
“No! Glasses on!”

I put my glasses back on, and she immediately proceeded to roar and attack me.

Apparently without glasses I cease to be Ben, and cannot play.

Sophie is Cute (Exhibit B)

We went with Sophie to play at the WOW Museum in Lafayette – a children’s museum with all sorts of educational games and activities. There’s a bank with a working pneumatic tube. There’s a platform you can stand on and pull an enormous soap bubble around your entire body.

There’s a music room and an art room, a pirate ship and a sandbox, a table full of magnets, an enormous doll house, a grocery store with a checkout lane, a railroad station, and at least a dozen other things I didn’t even get a chance to see.

At one point we played with a huge ball maze, where you drop a ball into one of many tubes on the side of a machine and wait for it to shoot out of one of the other tubes (unpredictably, to a child, at least). Sophie’s approach to this game was to grab a ball and run off to play with other exhibits while holding it.

When it was time to leave, she was quite upset, and understandably didn’t want to leave. There was lots of crying, all of which centered on the words, “My ball! I want my ball!”

She didn’t miss playing so much as she regretted having to leave behind a ball.

Sophie is Cute (Exhibit A)

(I got to play with Sophie, age 2, the whole time I was in Colorado. She is extremely cute, and this four part series will demonstrate that.)

While we were driving, Sophie decided it was essential that she have the umbrella that was sitting on the floor of the car, which she could of course not reach.

Sophie: “Mommy! I want that!”

The obvious “get out of jail free” answer to this request is, “Sorry, I’m driving.”

Sophie adopted an indignant expression, pointed at me in the passenger seat, and said, almost exasperatedly, “What’s that? Ben get it!”

As in, “Uhh, hello? What else is he there for? Duh!”

Sorry, Sophie. We hadn’t thought of that.