Saturday, October 25, 2008

Wanted: A jock strap to fit a two-year-old!

I swear we were looking for a rake.
We have a large red maple in our backyard that coats our lawn and another maple on our front lawn that blankets that grass, too.
My son was asking for a rake and so, I thought, it could only be a good thing to teach him some manual labour at the tender age of two.
When I was a kid (and a teen), I hated doing yard work with my parents. I always had this silly thought that the cool kids were going to be driving by my house at the same time I was raking and they'd think I was a loser. But here's the thing: from the yard, with a rake in your hand, it may seem like the cool kids are driving by in slooooomo mocking you, but when you're in a car, driving by someone's house, you don't have time to assess everything going on in the street, have time to mock the raker, and then look cool driving away. Plus, there's no shame in helping your parents.
Except, we couldn't find a toy rake anywhere, so we headed to the used kids' stores, where we've found some incredible deals.
The second we walked in the door of one of the stores, my son saw "them." They were on the floor, a little dusty, basically hidden under a rack of kids' winter coats and snow pants.
"Skates!" my son screamed.
For the past month, my son has been asking for skates. But he's two. Whose two-year-old has ice skates?
Ah, mine does.
If he wasn't my son, I'd think he had wacko parents who were forcing him to pick up a stick and wear skates in the hopes of being the next Sidney Crosbie, er, Crosby.
My son is an interesting study in nature versus nurture. I can't skate. His father, however, is a goalie and his 15-year-old brother plays rep hockey.
As soon as our toddler son turned one, he became obsessed with all things hockey and never left the house without a hockey stick. This isn't something we forced on him; it was something he wanted to do. In fact, I promptly put him in music lessons to counteract his obsession with the (outrageously expensive) game. But he persevered.
In the summer and fall, we played hockey in the driveway. In the winter, we were forced into the garage. Sure, he's had a wandering eye (he is male, after all). He had a thing for diggers and, for awhile, he couldn't get enough of screwdrivers, but lately, it has been all hockey all the time.
I don't know how he spotted these skates, but there they were: size eight skates and just $10.
We bought them and brought them home. He walked across our lawn in his skates to show the neighbours, ate his dinner sitting on the couch wearing them and went to bed with his skates on his night table so he could see them as he fell asleep.
When his father got home later that night, and went into our son's room to give him a good-night kiss, he woke up, pointed at his skates, and in his sleep whispered: "I bought skates!"
The next morning, my son woke up, got his skates and carried them to the breakfast table.
"Mommy. I need a homot." A what? "A homot."
So, there we were, first thing on a Sunday morning at Canadian Tire, with all the other hockey parents.
We grabbed a helmet, made for two-to-five-year-olds, (seriously, what two-year-old needs to skate?) and headed home. But when we got home, my son had one final request: "I need goves," he announced.
We told him no-no, there would be no gloves. A few minutes later, he appeared with an old pair of volleyball knee pads on his hands. "Goves!" he shouted with glee. I don't even want to know what he's going to do with his Winnie The Pooh sippy cup.
And here is the rest of it.

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