... ..for andrew ....August 7, 2005   "Him a lady." It was the early days of MTV and my son, then a toddler, was staring at the television watching a music video of Boy George.  I was passing through the living room on my way to the screened-in front porch when I stopped to acknowledge his observation.  I opened a beer, spritzing foam on his naked back.  My son was smiling, but I couldn't tell whether he smiled at Boy George or at his own economy of language.  And, of course, there was the wild card; my son had one hand down the front of his Pampers. A few years later, my son's mother asked him what he wanted for breakfast.  I looked up from the newspaper and watched the boy's undeveloped mind blaze through unseen dictionaries and still-milky memories, culling and organizing, discriminating and equating, a super-computer at work.  After several minutes and facial contortions, he replied, "Chinese toast?"  My first son was born April 14, 1981.  He last slept April 13, 1981.  The other day, he admitted fatigue.  Then he told me he had decided on an epitaph.  He wants written on his tombstone the phrase: What do we have here?  It is a nod to his habit of uttering those words when he happens upon a comely female.  Or, at least, that's what I assume.  previous..|..current..|..archives..|..3d quarter index..|..next

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