Jack at Dinner

Jack at dinner is occasionally trying; sometimes he doesn't want to eat, sometimes he doesn't want to sit still, sometimes he just messes around and is aggravating. And then sometimes, like tonight when Grammy was over, things are great, because he just wants to talk....

It started when Grammy was mentioning she'd seen a spider in her bathroom. I think she said it was a Daddy Longlegs, and that they were good, and I said, no, they're the scariest ones. And she explained how they eat other bugs or somesuch, and I said, well, they have the long, creepy-crawly legs. And then Jack chimed in:

"You know what's scary? An Ickthysaur." And we both kind of gaped. "An Ickthysaur?" I said. And he said, "YEAH! An Ickthysaur. They're sea monsters and they would bite you." And we said, "OK....." And he went on. "Yeah, the monster would HURT YOUR FEELINGS!" He raised his voice for dramatic effect.

"Once," he went on, "I had to fight the sea monster. Yeah! I hit him with my bat. And, and, I hit him with my bat and he couldn't bite me." (We had played tee ball outside just that afternoon.) "And then I put him in the laundry basket. And then I hit him again, and then I put him in the dryer, and when he came out he was clean, and he was a good monster."

"And," he continued, "The good monster was Jack."

I'm probably forgetting about half of his monologue about spiders, sea monsters, hurt feelings, bats, laundry baskets, dryers, and Ickthysaurs, but hopefully not much more than that.