Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Eli 7.7

Okay, so add one more item to the highly unlikely list of New Year's Resolutions I posted a while back: learn how to ride a unicycle.

Eli 7.7 wants to learn how to ride a unicycle because he idolizes his teacher, with good reason. He's one of the most consistently enthusiastic people I've ever met, and he's a perfect match, personality-wise, with Eli.

Mr. Agnew rides a unicycle (incredibly, he even commutes to work on it occasionally), and he's starting a unicycle club at school. Eli is in, of course, and since I've always regretted not learning how to ride a unicycle (I have no idea why I regret that, exactly, but I do), I'm going to learn with him.

I'm also hoping this is the perfect opportunity to show Eli what it means to work hard to learn something. He's going to fail and fail and fail, because learning how to ride a unicyle is difficult, but if I can just keep him practicing (and I think he will), when he does finally learn how to ride, he'll have a much better of understanding of how effort eventually equals success.

Which is a good lesson to learn, even at age 7.7.

I had to measure his inseam the other night to be able to calculate the proper wheel size for the unicycle we were ordering. As I was measuring, he started laughing and said "Hey! That's getting personal!"

I was sitting on the couch with Eli a few weeks ago when he farted. As the smell drifted over and I caught a disastrous whiff, I said "Looks like somebody burnt the popcorn!" Eli burst out laughing, and this has now become the go-to phrase when someone passes the most unfortunate wind. Only when Eli says it, the personality factor is tripled, obviously. "OH NO!" he'll shout. "Somebody BURNT the POPCORN!"

Yesterday he spent hours making a catalog of spells in Harry Potter that he bundled together as a book titled "Standard Grade Book Of Spells: Grade 1,2,3,4,5,6,7." Below the title was this:'
price $17.00 P
price $1.00

He handed me the book and I looked through it, then noticed the front page. "SEVENTEEN dollars?" I asked him, laughing.

"Dad!" he said. "That's the PREFERRED version."

Last night, he was walking around with his wand, demonstrating his extreme skill in wizardry, and he pointed the wand at me and shouted "WIKIPEDIA!"

I started laughing.

"What? It's a spell!" he said.

"No, it's not," I said. "It's an online encyclopedia."

"Oh," he said. "Touche."

I believe he was thinking of Waddiwasi.

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