We live with one of the roughest, toughest five-year-old guys you could ever hope to meet. Since the day he could walk, he’s been tearing apart everything he comes in contact with. It isn’t uncommon for him to enter a room and 3.2 minutes later leave that same room with nothing but a light fixture barely hanging on by its electrical wires and a trail of devastation looming behind. He’s one Tough Guy.
This kid is built like a Mack truck and charged with enough energy to light up half the houses on the Eastern seaboard. We frequently yell his middle name in conjunction with his first name, and I’m not sure that’s ever a good sign. Tough Guy makes us all laugh. Hysterically. Usually right as punishment needs to be doled out.
“Look at me,” I say, in a stern voice. And he looks. Then opens his eyes as wide as they can go before bugging-out and popping out of his face. We have a stare down. I see his fuzzy brown head and his dark chocolate eyes jump out of their sockets while the rest of his face remains perfectly still. I force myself to keep a straight face. I speak slowly.
“Listen to me, you canno-
“Whooooooooooooooooooooooooo!,” he tips his head back and howls loudly at the ceiling. I bite my lips to keep from smiling.
His head lowers back down into the stare-down.
“I’m…a…train,” he enunciates in a soft, low, serious voice. He stares back again with a poker face. He sees me breaking. He knows I’m going to lose it, and he wields his power over me. It comes down to a battle of wills. I’m the loser.
In case you are the one person on this planet who has never held a conversation with a five year old boy, let me tell you something: five-year-old boys have no concept of reality, which is why they are so amusing. They also seem to lack any concept of time, which is why they have zero inhibitions about parading into your bedroom at the crack of 0:dark-30 to announce that someone has unjustly mistreated them in some various way. Tough Guy recently entered our room before dawn and woke us from a deep, glorious sleep to offer such information.
“Mom” he whined loudly from the foot of my bed, “[Humdinger] punched me in the faaaaaaace. Can I have cereal?”
Tough Guy never fails to catch us off guard. The other day he came downstairs after bedtime and said from the stairway, “My lamp broke.”
“Oh?” I asked. “You mean the light bulb?”
“Glass can break.” He said with a defensive, informative tone, as if I had never heard such a thing. I walked upstairs and found the broken bulb and all it’s pieces piled neatly right outside my bedroom door.
Now, pause here and insert into your memory the scene from “Home Alone” where the burglar walks barefooted across broken glass bulbs. That was nearly me- howling, hopping and holding back a string of expletives as foam spewed forth from my mouth. There’s a pretty picture.
Mr. Diaz and I have these moments; moments when we are blissfully unaware of the catastrophe that Tough Guy is involved in just several yards away. Moments where we are sitting happily on the sofa in a cocoon of lovely ignorance, knocking back dark chocolate and peanut butter and pretending, that for a moment, the kids are accounted for and nobody is sneaking outside to burn a petrified raccoon carcass in the backyard.
We had one of those moments not long ago.
There we were, watching television after a long hard day. We were tired. We were happy. We were oblivious.
Tough Guy casually strolled into the living room without a single stitch of clothing, looked straight at us, and announced sincerely “I’d rather use a clean bathroom.” He padded off up the stairs. A second later we heard toilet water rushing down the hallway at light speed right toward us. Tough Guy had stuffed an entire roll of toilet paper down the pot, flushed multiple times, then tried to clean up on his own by throwing all the clean laundry he could find onto the rushing river of pee water. He even took off his own clothes and body surfed.
I’ve lamented to my friends over these short years about Tough Guy’s brilliance, his antics and his ability to escape from any locked area. “How will I survive?” I’ve cried, “I can’t keep him anywhere! He always escapes!”
“Don’t worry,” my friends have comforted, “God can use his abilities one day for something positive…like escaping from an overseas prison.” Fabulous. Good to know the lock-picking and computer hacking may pay off for all of us one day.
I sure don’t love the wreckage Tough Guy makes. I don’t love doing CPR on a squirrel after he’s pelted it with a football. I don’t love finding my favorite book floating like a raft in the bathroom sink. I don’t love learning that there’s a ham sandwich and yesterday’s underpants shoved down the air-vent hole.
But I really do love my very Tough Guy. He’s my favorite.
Tough Guy provides this household with bountiful amounts of comedic relief, which almost makes up for the catastrophes he unwittingly creates. Plus, he’s simply off the charts on the adorable-o-meter.
And that is why he’s still allowed to live here.
That was so funny, I laughed until I cried and peed a little. I had to stop laughing and clear my eyes a couple of times before reading on. Your Tough Guy is really unique. I l have always told my children they are all my favorites in different ways. they are all unique. But there is nothing like #1 who when about a year old would go up the 2 steps into our bathroom grab ahold of the toilet paper end and begin to take it with him throughout the apartment room to room and the smile and sense of accomplishment with the task once it was all disbursed being quiet as a church mouse. This became a ritual practice when I wasn’t looking, and he would always make sure that he ended the task looking up at me with his big bright eyes and smiling face. I wish I had written down more of the antics of my children early on before senility sets in so I can reread what had happened and perhaps bring back the memory. Is it ever too late to begin a baby book?
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It’s never too late, Brenda. 🙂
And your (not so) little dude sounds very familiar…
Thanks for peeing here. 😏
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OH MY WORD…You are HILARIOUS!
I remember an incident with my brown eyed imp…he was SO LITTLE and I don’t remember what he got in trouble for…but I was really giving him what for…finger wagging and all…and he looked up at me with those chocolate eyeballs and said ever so sweetly, “I love you Momma”…I scooped him up and hugged and kissed him…so precious…
Oh and here is the link to the post I was telling you about…I can’t remember what they sold for…maybe $100 or so…so funny!
http://mom2my6pack.blogspot.com/2007/08/adventures-in-grocery-shopping.html
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Oh Carrie, that link was just hysterical. So happy you shared it here. And even more happy when I don’t shop with small children.
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Hahaha! Oh man. You guys deserve the chocolate!!
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I totally deserve the chocolate.
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Tough Guy sounds like the most amazing little person 😀
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swimlittlesquid,
Love your user name!!
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It’s a reminder to keep on swimming when the going gets tough 🙂
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Cool, I like it.
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Thanks for coming by! TG is an amazing little person. It’s even more amazing that we’ve let him stay here. Lol
He’s a wild one. 🙂
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Your blog is really funny and well written. I’ll hang around for a bit, I think 🙂
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Thanks, SLS, check out the “best of” page if you want the funniest/most read posts. 🙂
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Will do!
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If Tough Guy married my daughter, “The Tornado,” they might be capable of accidentally taking out the planet. Thanks for always making me laugh. Love reading your stuff.
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Haha, then for the sake of the universe, let’s keep them apart! Lol
Thanks for coming by and for being a loyal reader. 🙂
We had the flu this past week and it sucked away all my time and energy. Actually, since it cycled through the entire familia, it sorta took away my will to live. But I’m hoping to get another post out on Saturday. (About the flu, of course. So it will likely be disgusting. You may want to hide…)
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Absolutely. I truly enjoy everything you write.
In keeping them apart, we are like modern-day heroes, undoubtedly keeping safe the world, from impending disaster.
Is it sad that I am looking forward to your disgusting flu post? Hoping you all fully recover, regain your will to live, and share with us all of the gory details 🙂
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Haha!! You’re too awesome for words.
We are fully well right now, but I’m just trying to catch back up on all the laundry and house cleaning. Good Lord, there was a lot of puke.
😝
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