Po Ta Toes

Last night The Kid had a sleep over with a friend. He's our neighbor, also 5. For the purposes of this blog we will call him Little Neighbor. He's kind of the Sancho Panza to The Kid's Don Quixote. Not physically though, Little Neighbor isn't really very little at all (The Kid gets his hand-me-downs). Instead, The Kid dreams up all sorts of things for them to play, and Little Neighbor follows along best he can, sometimes I wonder if he understands the Robin Williams-like leaps of faith and subject The Kid leads them into. As they get older, though, Little Neighbor is getting smarter. He's resisting, and Little Neighbor wants to play what Little Neighbor dreams up. The Kid is having none of that. Imagine the war. Ugh.

So they are sparring, a lot. Little Neighbor is The Kid's best friend, for all intents and purposes. The thing that is interesting to me is that The Kid hits at school, but for all the drama last night between these boys, not a single incident of violence occurred. What makes The Kid hit at school, but not in any real epidemic way anywhere else? From Whence?

Moving right along... We made individual pizzas last night. I was making my ingredients (veggies, yum) while the boys were circling around me, hungry for both attention and food. Little Neighbor, not the brightest kid I've ever met but still a general sweetheart, sees me slicing tomatoes to put on my pizza. "PO-TA-TOES." he says, "I LOVE PO-TA-TOES. I want PO-TA-TOES on my pizza." Little neighbor annuciates every syllable of the word potato like his mouth is a drum. The Kid was incredulous. "Little Neighbor, those are sooo not potatoes. They are... um, mom, what are those?" All my self-righteous thoughts about Little Neighbor's mom not teaching him the names of fruits and vegetables fly out the window. The Kid does not eat veggies. He's got the gag reflex from hell, and unless I hide them in soups or sauces, pretty much every vegetable he tries makes him throw up.

I correct them, no boys, it's a tomato.

Little Neighbor picked up the tomato I hadn't begun cutting and said, "Can I eat that?" Stunned, because my own kid is starting to wretch and just the thought that Little Neighbor, his ally, his Sancho Panza!, is about to abandon him to the vegetable world. Of course I say yes, because I want to see Little Neighbor do it. He bites into the PO-TA-TO like an apple and eats the whole thing in two bites (this was not a little tomato). Little neighbor says, "you don't care what I call it, because I eat it!" Oh, my wacky, lovable little Little Neighbor!!!