Boys and Pirates

I sat and marveled at my youngest child tonight.

My eldest has a dance class every Wednesday and Thursday. I usually get to stay home with the other two and we played pirates. Or I should say we plugged in some pirate music--you know the type with lots of "Aarghs!", "Shiver me timbers!", and pieces o' eight, and scurvy, and limes (which if you're in the know is a good cure for scurvy). With my wife gone, I blasted the music to my-neighbors-knocking-on-my-door decibel level . We danced and cavorted and wrestled and hit each other with plastic weapons. Finally, (after about 2 minutes) I got tired and sat down to watch. That's when it happened.

Boys seem to have this penchant coordination between imagination and thematic music. I know I had it. When I had the Superman the Movie soundtrack, way back when, I remember donning my cape, putting on my Superman Underoos and arranging my hair in an "s" shape, flying everywhere throughout my house. And here I sit watching my son syncopate to the rhythms, his golden locks bouncing along with his whole being, contained in this hypnotic farse. And I saw him lost in my smiling. It seemed that every grin that moved across my face for led him deeper into his trance, lost to an audience of only one. I saw my son in a way in which I will soon never see again or forget. So much of me, in some selfish way, wants to return to that unhindered time. A time before checkbooks and paychecks, fretting about the future.

Go get 'em Tiger.