Dad Entry #20

Michael’s favorite song right now is “Thunderstruck.” Nice! AC-DC still makes my hair stand up. An important legacy for my son. He liked a “Rusted Root” song I played for him too; it had a quick beat, a lot of percussion. We listened to both songs on the way to the “Cabelas” superstore nearby. Papa John has taken Michael to Cabelas in KC before. He loves it. They have taxidermied fish and animals all over the place. Bears, hammerhead sharks, even a safari scene with a rhino, lion, etc. They also have a pair of huge fish tanks with freshwater fish like bass, trout, catfish, panfish. But our prized discovery was a ‘snakesy,’ a stuffed rattlesnake. Michael started chirping in his high-pitched, ‘baby animal’ voice. It’s difficult to describe, it’s the voice he gives his animals – including his ‘snakesy’ and ‘pillpo’ at home – when they talk to him or each other. Michael is very imaginative; he weaves terrific stories and scenes. He narrates aloud as he acts out the scenes with the animal figures – or cars or trains – he is playing with. “Then the baby sperm whale said to the dolphin, ‘Watch out! I’m going to dive for a squid, and you should be jumping at the dolphin show,’” and on and on. But the high-pitched ‘baby’ voice of ‘Michael the narrator’ can be grating. It reminds me of “Caddyshack” when Bill Murray gives a voice to the gopher. Or the voice of “Toonces the driving cat” from Saturday Night Live. “Oh noooooooooooo!” says Toonces the cat as he drives off the cliff. So at Cabelas, Michael saw the rattlesnake and lit up with excitement. “Snakesy, snakesy, snakesy, snakesy!!!” I think I noticed a sideways glance from a couple of crusty hunters. The kind of guys that stop at Cabelas to buy bullets. So they can chew on them and spit fire. Actually, we were all kids once (except for Chuck Norris; he was born with a beard and he roundhouse kicked the obstetrician in the face). So, anyway, we all had annoying ‘play voices’ and our favorite toy animals. What? “Speak for yourself,” you say? Fine. But I‘ll admit it, I probably had a high-pitched, ‘play voice’ too. Of course, my ‘animal stories’ were always one animal kicking another animal’s butt! I can’t wait for Michael to start writing down his stories some day. They’ll be great! Maybe we can write together. He’s an inquisitive, creative dude, and I think that’s a great blessing.