Desperate Houseflies: The Magazine

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Sunday, May 06, 2007

Joshy the Jedi




I'm not sure I'd ever make it as a dad. I'd walk around worried about something all the time.


For instance.


The picture above makes me sad. Joshy's the kid in the green shirt. We woke him up about 5:45 to take him to Disneyland. This picture is taken about 12 hours later. He's exhausted. He'd seen this show earlier in the day where they "train Jedi." It's a fancy little show where some guy from Star Wars does a little light-saber routine and then calls up some kids from the crowd to go through Jedi training. And then at the end of the show they get to fight Darth Vader.

Joshy decided he wanted to do this and so his dad and I got him there early enough to sit on the front row. Which he did so very patiently for about half an hour. Did I mention he'd been awake for almost 12 hours at this point? Walking around in the hot sun? The kid was pooped.


He's kind of a quiet kid. So Jack and I were worried he wouldn't get noticed in the mob of, oh, I'm guessing 200 or 300 kids. He was one of the first ones there, but he didn't get noticed. Mostly because he wasn't loud enough for the guy picking the kids -- who based his decision on who was most easily seen: so it was mostly tall kids or kids whose parents pushed their ways to the front holding their kids high in the air (no lie -- the jerks).


So Joshy didn't get chosen even though he'd been there for a long time. After the show started, he finally walked back to his dad and said he was too tired to stay there. He was trying not to cry. I wanted to punch the Jedi.


I'd probably punch a lot of Jedi if I were a dad. Or eat a lot of ice cream, which is what I think we did to cheer Joshy up. Actually, I think it was to cheer us up -- Joshy seemed to have forgotten about it in about 30 seconds. And he seems to be living a normal life. Me, on the other hand -- I'm still hoping Darth Vader beats up the "Jedi Master" at the end of the show one day soon.

3 Comments:

Blogger Terry Austin said...

5:45 your time or 5:45 Christian Standard Time?

'Cuz if it's 5:45 CST, I think I'll beat up all of y'uns. You never wake a kid up that early.

Depending on how tired he actually was, Joshy may or may not remember this as vividly as you do. It may be something that bugs him for a while. But, and I don't mean this to sound cloying or trite, the fact that he was/is surrounded by family makes a pretty big impact.

He'll more likely remember the brighter parts of the trip -- such as seeing where Uncle Mikey lives -- than he will this one moment.

As for the parents who ran their kids to the front, I think I know those people. I hope they're not me.

7:31 PM  
Blogger Terry Austin said...

All of that to say:

1) Kids are resilient. I think somebody made that point here not too long ago.

2) Joshy may be disappointed, but he likely forgot it quickly because of the presence of loving family like you guys.

3) I was kidding about beating you all up, but 5:45? Yeee-owch.

7:34 PM  
Blogger Michael Lasley said...

You're right. I don't think Joshy would remember this now -- it was three or so weeks ago and he's all up in some t-ball these days. I just got the picture developed this weekend (I still use the old school film cameras) and I remembered taking the picture because he was SO tired at that point and yet was waiting so patiently. He looked like he was about to fall asleep.

Trust me -- he was doing better at 5:45 in the a.m. than I was. Although, it would have seemed like 7:45 to him. I should post a picture of what kids look like after a day at Disneyland. One of my favorite things was when, at about 9 o'clock at night, Jack was doing some gift buying for people at a store in "Downtown Disney" and Joshy was also looking for something to buy with some money his grandparents had given him. He finally just gave up and said, "I'm too tired to even think."

7:36 AM  

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