Junior's Diary

Dear Diary,

It's been awhile.  What with the warmer weather and all, I've been pretty busy...mostly collecting rocks and sticks and digging in the dirt while enthusiastically looking for "bad bugs" and then running to Mom, screaming my head off, when I actually find a bug.  She usually laughs at me and says, "Why did you look for a bug if you didn't want to find one?"  And I say, "I wanted to look for it, not find it."

And then she says, "You are the most literal-minded child in the world."

She says that a lot, actually.  And although she is wrong on a whole bunch of topics (the suitability of Pringles for breakfast, unnecessary bathing, whether or not brushing one's teeth should really be a daily task, and bedtime, just to name a few), she's pretty much right about this one.  She tells Daddy about all the language and linguistic classes she took in college, and how this one professor said that everyone who loves language becomes even more fascinated by it when they have a child, how there is something fascinating about watching a little human learn to develop linguistic skills and begin to process blah blah blah and then I eat some dirt while watching Daddy's eyes glaze over a little.

I call glue "paper-stick," for example.  Makes more sense then glue, to me.  A closet is, and always has been, a shirtie-house, and bras are simply Mommy-shirties.  The house and I both get "dirtied down" before we can get cleaned up.  She finally retired my Superman t-shirt because every time we went out into public, strangers would ask me "Hey!  Are you Superman?" which frankly, baffled me and made me angry, because hello!  I am obviously not Superman, so I would quickly (and loudly) reply "NO! I AM JUSTIN RYAN!"  Same with shirts that have words printed on them - why would anyone ask me what my shirt says?  MY SHIRT DOESN'T TALK.  I mean, I am four years old and I have that one figured out.  "Go pick out a book to read," Mom will say.  

"I DON'T KNOW HOW TO READ," I will reply, because I don't.  And frankly, I am too busy to learn.

I am not trying to be funny.  In fact, when Mom starts to laugh, I usually point that out, loudly and repeatedly, until she apologizes...but I can still hear the laughing under her words.

The other night, though, I said something that made Mom laugh so hard that she cried (also confusing, to be honest), and she actually climbed up to reach the top shelf of her closet and brought out the dust-covered baby book she hasn't touched in over two years to write it down. (She'll probably just give me her log-in to facebook in lieu of anything meaningful.)

It was bedtime, so I was already feeling a little contentious.  She was supervising the whole "go potty and put on your night time pants."  (We call them "night time" pants to avoid the indignity of the term "pull ups"  and also because I only wear them at night time, so it just makes more sense.)

So I put on my night time pants, and she said, "You know, you've been waking up dry every morning.  You've been doing a great job of holding your pee-pee all night."

I gave her a startled, confused look, and then said, "I DON'T TOUCH IT WHILE I AM SLEEPING."

Because it's true, Diary.  There are plenty of times when I do touch it, but I am relatively certain that I leave it well enough alone at night.  At least for now.

Sincerely,
Justin Ryan Kilgore, Jr.