The Literature Scholar Has a Baby

Earlier tonight I found myself poking around in e-mails I sent to friends when Word Boy was a baby. By then, I was three years out of grad school in English Literature, but I still had this tendency to bring my talents to bear on any literature I encountered. Which at this time--June 29, 2004--was Blue's Clues:

The Lego Savant is watching Blue's Clues. It's one of those weird episodes where Steve hints that his life is not perfect: in this one, he feels sad because he never finds the clues first. But it's his fate never to find the clues first, but to wander around like an idiot saying, "What? I need to tie my shoe? You wish you had some glue? For lunch, we're having stew? Oh, a clue!" It should be impossible for him to imagine any other option, because this is a given in his world and it cannot be changed.

Never mind how strange the episodes are where Joe comes to take over--again, there should be no hint of an outside world, or that anyone could come and go from Steve's weird little life with his talking furniture and crazy dog. And yet, one day he gets a phone call from his brother who is coming to visit. And then Steve escapes from the enchantment, leaving Joe to live his weird life--exactly as Steve lived it. Joe says and does everything exactly as Steve did. Again, it's very strange when Joe is being taught how to do it all--it opens up the possibility that things don't have to be done that way, and emphasizes their strangeness.

But that's just me: "The introduction of Joe underscores the regimentation of life at Blue's house, where no deviation from any given behavior is tolerated, whether the 'Blue's Clues' hand motion or the dance that goes with the 'Think, think, think,' song. Yet the fact that Joe can come from outside the world of the narrative--and that the man-child Steve can escape the two-dimensional cartoon neighborhood in which he has resided, stepping back into the flow of time which surrounds it--creates a rift in the narrative through which the text can be deconstructed to reveal its malleability and artificiality."

And on July 20, 2004, Green Eggs & Ham

The Lego Savant loves to rhyme. A lot of times, he makes a rhyme work with nonsense syllables: this morning he came up with something like, "Here's a string, ropey-dopey; famma gamma scopey-scopey." But a couple of weeks ago he produced this couplet which he liked so much he has often repeated it:

It was dark in the night
So I turned on the light.

He has picked up the habit of anapest from Dr. Seuss. Dr. Seuss is a master of the anapestic foot, two unstressed followed by one stressed syllable, which looks like this:

on the FIF teenth of MAY, in the JUN gle of NOOL
in the HEAT of the DAY, in the COOL of the POOL,
He was SPLASH ing, en JOY ing the JUN gle's great JOYS
When HOR ton the EL e phant HEARD a small NOISE

That fourth line starts with a two-syllable foot, but that's OK. That's the kind of thing poets do. I think you could teach scansion to college freshman using Dr. Seuss. If anyone taught scansion anymore. Which they don't. Not since the death of formalism.

Anyway, you'll notice that the Lego Savant's little couplet is anapestic: It was DARK in the NIGHT so i TURNED on the LIGHT. His literary influences are showing.

Did I ever tell you about the time the Lego Savant had made me read him Green Eggs and Ham so many times that I got bored, and to amuse myself I used the book to explain "narrative arc" to him, and who the protagonist is (the un-named Green Eggs and Ham Hater) and who the antagonist (Sam-I-Am) and what is the rising action and and what is the climax and what is the denouement. "Green Eggs and Ham," I told him, "is nearly Aristotelian in its adherence to the form." He was impressed. I think he was two.

The Lego Savant, at three, had his own ideas about books:

Today, the Lego Savant chose In a People House. I said, "Oh, that's a good book."

Lego Savant: Except the end.

Su: The end? Where the people come home and throw the mouse and the bird out?

The Lego Savant: yeah.

The Lego savant studies the cover: Maybe in another book, the people come out to the yard and come up the tree to where the bird is and the...the...the...what's that?

Su: A mouse.

The Lego Savant: and the mouse and they invite the bird and the mouse into the house. I think that's what happens in another People House book. We should get that book. They have it at the library with the trains, but not at the library that just has the legos.

You know how you always hear parents saying, "I wish I'd written down some of the cute things my kids said"? I will never have that regret. I wrote something like 500 single-spaced pages in the year after the Lego Savant was born.

OK, I have to share one more thing, that has nothing to do with books, because this is one of the most hilarious things that has ever happened to me as a mom. It is now August of 2004:

It's 5:50 p.m. A recent IM from Raider has told me that he is heading out of work and will pick up a baguette at the bakery to have with dinner. I am on the couch nursing Word Boy and reading a novel. The Lego Savant is next to me, playing with a little motorized train engine about five inches long and maintaining a running commentary which I have mostly tuned out, so although I hear it, it doesn't register when he says, "I'm going to cut your hair." The next thing I know, the train engine is on my head--affixed there by my hair, which has been wound around and around its axle (I presume). It is pulling a big hunk of my hair, it really hurts, and the train engine is perched on my head at a jaunty angle like a little hat from the 1940s. I say, "Lego Savant, I know you didn't know it would do that, and you didn't mean to hurt me, but I want you to go to your room and wait there quietly until your Daddy comes to get you."

And then I have to sit there with the train attached to my head until Raider gets home, wondering whether he is going to have to shave a hunk of my hair to get it off, and considering whether I will wear a scarf or a hat until it grows back in.

I am happy to report that Raider was able to rescue me by running the wheels backwards to unwind my hair, and although I have a tender spot, I also still have my hair.

I'm so glad it was nearly time for him to come home, and that he had the car. Can you imagine if I'd had to drive to pick him up with a red engine on my head? Choo-choo! "Hi, honey. I need you to meet me in the parking lot in 10 minutes. Bring scissors. I'll explain when I get there."

And people wonder why I shaved my head for three years. Raider used to have long hair until the Lego Savant reached the hair-pulling stage. It's just safer this way.