Your Motivational Slogans Leave Something to Be Desired

Upon someone new entering the room:

Her: “I want to arm wrestle you!”
Him: “I’m leaving right now though.”
Her: “Wait, come back! I don’t even know who you are! You have to arm wrestle me!”

Upon finding a taker and beginning to arm wrestle:

Her: (yelling as one would yell “I’ll never give in!”) “I will not divorce you for tax settlement purposes!”

– Things said at parties

Go Go Gadget Strange Remark!

“You look like a Go Go Girl.  (beat)  It’s not a bad thing – I like Go Go Girls.”
– One coworker to another

I planned to link to a picture of a Go Go Girl for context, but when you Google that phrase (in Google Images) you get “Go Go Girl Sexy Adult Costume” in the first result, and “Go Go Girl Child Costume” in the eighth.

New rule:  Anything that can be made into a “sexy adult costume” should be unavailable in “child costume” form.

The True Spirit of Prom

“I’ll tell you this: I wanted something physical.  I wanted to either fool around with her – meaning kiss her,  feel her up, or whatever –  or even more, go all the way, or whatever.  I wasn’t counting on that, I was just here to have fun, and that’d be a nice feature to it.  That’d be like a bonus.” – David, Junior at Lincoln Park High School.  This American Life #186, “Prom”

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.

Phew, Indeed!

After the Green Line crash last week, NTSB officials are in town investigating the accident.

Four or five of them were on my B train this evening with a CBS reporter and cameraman, and as we pulled into Boston College one announced, “Phew.  We made it.”

Wait!  The National Transportation Safety Board was unsure about whether or not my train would “make it?”  I feel like this should bother me.

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.