Miss Patti, Master Hip & Some Tall Tales

1. Rebecca's preschool's parent-teacher organization was raising money by selling copies of a CD by the school's music teacher, the famous Miss Patti, so I bought one, thinking how nice it would be for Becca to be able to listen to her favorite Miss Patti songs in the car. She LOVES music class of course. The first time I put it on for her in the car it was very cute, she peered around cautiously as if expecting Miss Patti herself to pop out from under the front seat or something. What I didn't figure into my calculation was that Ben, also familiar with Miss Patti from his two years at CJP, would be equally enthusiastic about the CD and now every time we get in the car both of them immediately start chorusing "Miss Patti! Miss Patti!" And when we get where we're going, and I turn off the car, Rebecca cries. No lie.

2. Ben has decided that he needs a new nickname. "Your nickname is Pudgie," I told him in response to this revelation. I started calling Ben "Pudgie" in the car one day on the way home from his one-month doctor visit, and somehow it stuck. For the first couple of years I called him Pudgie more often than I called him Ben, and five years later he still gets called Pudgie now and then. "Pudgie is not cool enough," Ben informed me with a straight face. "I want my new nickname to be Master Hip. Tell Daddy, okay?"

3. As we were getting ready to eat dinner tonight, Ben confided something to me. "In school," he said, sounding quite troubled, "we have to write about what we did during the weekend, and I can never remember what I did. So I make it up. Is that bad?" "What do you write about?" I asked. Ben's writing assignments are exercises in heiroglyphics and very creatively sounded out words. They are usually 2-3 sentences each and it's a very good day if I can make out half of what he's written. "Last week," he said, "I wrote that we went to Qdoba for dinner and we saw a rat there." I explained to Ben that he should try to remember something about his weekend to write about, but that if he can't it is fine to make something up as long as he doesn't pretend it's the truth. He seemed quite relieved that I wasn't mad at him. His teacher, however, may never go to Qdoba again.