Three Things

Well, I've learned three things today (that I can remember; I probably learned and promptly forgot much, much more). The first two are related. The third is funny.

First thing: If you want to sell a car, do it on Craigslist. Yes, we sold a car, again. Yes, it's that car. Why did I sell it? Well, the short answer is that I love my wife, and she did not love that car. It was green (which she did not like), and kinda rattle-y (which made her nervous), and had a serious paint issue on the hood (which was embarrassing, yea, even unto myself). So I sold it, and am buying my brother-in-law's slightly newer, non-green, non-embarrassing-hood-desecration Honda Accord.

(Sticklers will point out that the husband of my wife's sister is not technically my brother-in-law. To these people, I say two things. First, language is a method of communication. If I say that a fellow is my brother-in-law, most people will recognize that as an indication of a relationship within a particular orbit: not quite immediate family, but closer than extended family. Second, ppphhhhtttt.)

Back to Craigslist. I put up the ad on Saturday afternoon before we went to the park. I got my first call while we were at the park, and met the guy in the Wal-Mart parking lot that night. He did not buy it, but I got at least two phone calls, plus at least one email each day after that. Having used other means to sell cars before, I can tell you that that is a lot of activity (certainly, selling a very popular car at slightly below Kelly Blue Book price also helps).

Yesterday, a lady, her son, and his daughter came by to look at the car. They test drove it, and he said he liked it. I told him that yet another fella was coming up from Dublin, Georgia (a 3-hour drive) to look at it later that night, and this first guy told me that he would call me back by 3:30 that day. He didn't.

He called at 9:00 instead (the Dublin guy neither showed up nor called; this happened a lot). Man-With-Daughter said, over the phone, that he would come by at 11 or 12 this morning to pick up the car. He didn't show up.

At about 1:00 today, I got a call from a DeKalb County police officer (eek). He asked if the car was still available. As MWD had not shown up or called, I said that it was. He asked where we lived, and that he would be over in 15 minutes. He showed up in 12. He opened the car, started it, turned on the AC, and looked under the hood. That's all. He explained that the car was for his girlfriend, who had been looking for about 2 weeks for a Honda Accord like this. He was going to tell her to come over and look at this one.

About 20 minutes later I got a call from the girlfriend. She asked where we lived and said that she would be over in about 15 minutes. She showed up in 14 (they're going to have a very happy life together). She took the car for a test drive, and called from the test drive to say that her boyfriend, Officer On-Time, would be by in a few minutes with half of the payment (he was), and that she would be by with the rest of the payment and to sign papers as soon as she could find her way back (she did). Signed, sealed, delivered, etc.

6 days to sell a car. Craigslist rocks, if you have the time & patience to put up with the process. And the emails. I got an email on Saturday (about an hour after I had put the ad up) that said simply, "800 cash." I didn't respond, and got a second email on Sunday from the same address that said, "500 cash." Someone needs to read up on economics. And etiquette.

And now for the second thing. I had a pile of cash on the dining room table, when Timothy (9) and Stephen (7) walk in the room. They just about fainted, and begged to hold the $100 and $20 bills. So we looked at watermarks and the plastic embedded strips in both bills.

Then I pointed out some of the newer and nifty-neato features on the new 20's. I asked the boys to point out some differences. Timothy liked the new shiny parts on the bill, and Stephen liked the portrait. But I waited for someone to point out the different colors on the $20 note. When nobody did, I asked them, "What about the colors?" Then my wife said, "Remember who you're talking to."

So I had a V-8 moment, but stopped just short of the head slap, saying, "What about Stephen?" But he couldn't see the colors either (bluish on the ends and red in the middle). So . . . off to the computer for the colorblindness test. No dice.

Stephen is colorblind.

Moderate panic attack this time. Can doctors be colorblind? I called my sister, whose husband is a doctor. She said he was traveling but she'd ask and call me back in an hour. She did, and the answer is yes, doctors can be colorblind. Or, rather, colorblind folks can be doctors. Whew.

At first, Stephen was a little upset. This lasted for exactly 27 seconds, until I told him that Timothy was colorblind, too, and that they could be colorblind buddies. He practically skipped out of the room. No worries there, and it really explains the past 4 years of wardrobe decisions.

Okay, finishing up. Third thing: Jonah (6) is an entrepreneur. The invisible hand is strong with that one.

My mom dropped by today on her weekly trip down to Macon, and she and my wife decided that it would be a wonderful thing if Jonah and Sam (3) went with her. So down they drove (in her new van), to visit my sister and her children, including Aaron who is also 3, and is Sam's "bestest friend and cousin, and also friend." As my brother-in-law is out of town, they all went to Chuck-E-Cheese's.

About midway through the meal, and after a while of playing games, a boy walked up to the table and asked, "Where's Jonah?" My third son peeked around the corner, spotted his new friend (or should I say partner?), and smiled. Then, under the table, Jonah passed the boy some tokens, and the boy passed Jonah some tickets.

Apparently, they had worked out a mutually beneficial relationship. To wit: Jonah gave this older boy tokens; the older boy played the games at a higher level of skill; then the boy gave the tickets to Jonah. The boy got to play more games than he would have on his own, and Jonah got more tickets than he would have on his own.

If there are small plastic lizards involved, I'm sure that Jonah will find a way to game the system. Adam Smith would be proud; I know that I am.

Tuesdays With Jonah

And Wednesdays too.

This week is the last week of Kindergarten for Jonah. It's been a fun year. He's learned a lot and so have we. Despite our initial fears, we've found out that Jonah can actually pay attention in class, that he can learn to behave properly in certain settings, that he can actually absorb the knowledge being given to him by his loving teachers.

Seriously, before this year began, we were wondering if Jonah could do any of those things. Last Summer all we had in mind was the 4- and 5-year-old Jonah, the one who cried when we gave him 5 crackers instead of 4, the one who could barely sit through a reading of Give A Pig A Pancake without jumping up and doing a dance at least once.

But he did it. We were shocked when, at our first Parent-Teacher conference his wonderful teacher told us that Jonah was progressing nicely, was well-behaved in class, and was doing well in school.

"Really?" I asked. "We have a history here." (She had taught both Timothy and Stephen.) "You can tell us the truth."

She laughed and said that yes, really, Jonah was doing well. That he was certainly more active and vocal than his older brothers, but that he was doing a good job of controlling himself at school.

"Really?" I repeated.

"Yes, really." She said, smiling. "You'll start to see it at home about midway through the year."

And we did, although he's still Jonah.

He's reading now, too, on his own. Just like Timothy and Stephen did, he'll ride along in the car, looking at road signs, calling out the ones he can read (Ice! Chick-fil-a! Ham!) and asking for help with the ones he can't read yet. He has his own set of books in the back of the car, alongside the books of the older boys. So sometimes when we drive around, I'll hear him sounding out words, or just reading out loud to himself. Wow.

With the end of this school year comes the end of a peculiar blessing of timing. Jonah goes to a different school than the older two boys, whose day begins an hour earlier. Plus, my wife has "activities" on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. So on those days I get to be home with Jonah for an hour each morning, just my boy and me.

At about 8:15 I'll go downstairs and make sure he's started getting dressed. At 8:30 I'll yell down to remind him to put on his socks and shoes. At 8:45 I'll go sit on the stairs (if it's cold) or outside on the front step while we wait for his best friend's Mom to come pick him up. While we wait, we'll talk, play games, look at the world exhibited in our front yard . . .

But no more. Today was the last Tuesday With Jonah. The Wednesdays ended already, a couple of weeks ago. And next year he'll start 1st grade and go to school with the big boys and I'll be at home all by myself on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings, which isn't as nice as it sounds.

Sam starts Kindergarten in two more years, and we haven't yet decided if he'll go or not. I for one am pushing for him to go, for a variety of reasons. But somewhere in the top 5 reasons is the possibility of Tuesdays with Sam, which would be very beneficial. I'm sure he'll enjoy them too.

You Win!

Timothy is colorblind.

We first suspected it earlier this Spring. A few years ago we had loaned out my wife's copy of Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo (literally, the only video game she will play) to her sister and brother. It took about 5 years, but my wife started jonesing to play it again (and yet she scoffs at my WoW addiction). So we borrowed it back.

The boys loved it, and Timothy quickly became very good. The first game I played against him, I won by a lot. The second game we played I won just barely. He killed me on the third. I haven't won a match against him since.

As I watched him play, though, I noticed something. The game is basically "battle tetris" with square blocks falling down in sets of two. The blocks are red, blue, green, and yellow, and you try to build larger gems out of the smaller squares. Then, occasionally, a "swirly" will fall. The swirly will be one of the four colors, and if you place it next to a square of the same color, they both will explode. If other squares of the same color are touching the first one, you can get a chain reaction. Then all the squares that blew up on your side will fall en masse onto your opponent's side. Very nice.

Back to Timothy, who all the while is cleaning our clocks. I would see him drop yellow swirlies on green blocks, and vice versa. And I never heard him complain. So I asked him one time "Why did you put that green swirly on the yellow gem?"

"I don't know."

As we played more and more, I came to realize that he couldn't really tell the difference between yellow and green in the game. He could build red and blue gems from the blocks, but his yellows and greens were always mixed together haphazardly. But it didn't bother him at all. He kept playing, kept winning, kept unlocking new characters and songs that I'd never seen ("I wonder if Mr. Mark has unlocked this before?" This became a constant refrain, an ode to my friend, the uber-gamer).

And somewhere, deep inside me, it hurt to know that I was getting beaten, not only by my own son, but by my probably colorblind son in a game where colors were so very important. Then I got over it and was proud of my boy for kicking this game's butt with essentially one optic nerve cell cluster (possibly two) tied behind his back.

Then we kind of forgot about it (that's our family specialty). Until yesterday, when we played not one, but two games of Risk. And Timothy kept taking Egypt away from me. I owned Africa, he owned Asia, and he kept insisting that he needed Egypt.

You see, in our edition of the game, Africa is various shades of brown, Asia is various shades of green, and Egypt is a very light brown that Timothy interpreted as being a very light green. So he kept taking it away from me.

Exasperated, I cried out, "Egypt is part of Africa. Leave it alone. Don't you have some younger brothers to terrorize, you Asia-wielding horde?"

He laughed and said, "Sorry Dad. It looks like part of Asia to me."

I looked at him for a second, checking for self-pity. Seeing none, I told him, "You know, you're probably color blind."

"Probably. Now I want Africa for real." Then he took it away from me. I should never have taught him to attack his enemy's weakness and avoid his strengths. I can still beat him in Syphon Filter, but mostly because I won't let him play that yet.

So tonight, after the haircuts (Summer buzzes, yay!), I looked up those color blindness tests online. You know, the ones with the circles made up of lots of dots. They have numbers in them in different colored dots. He couldn't see the numbers on any of them, poor guy.

We'll get him checked out over the summer and verify how bad and what kind of color blindness it is. And I'll be on the lookout for rotten kids who'll suggest two completely different shades of purple to wear together. Just like I suggested for a buddy of mine when we were in middle school. Sorry Matt.

After tucking him into bed, I asked if he was upset, and he said that he was a little. I think it mostly has to do with the idea that something is demonstrably "not right" with himself. Also the fact that he'll never be a pilot. But he asked one time while playing SPF2T if being color blind would keep him from doing what he wanted to do when he grew up. Since he wants to be a lawyer and then become a missionary (admittedly, an odd combination), I told him that he could still do those things.

He smiled, dropped 99 squares on me, and then laughed. He'll be fine.