Obsession
Daniel has a tendency to get obsessive. At the library recently, he found a book about recycling aluminum cans, which was really a math book disguised as a picture book. It talked about collecting cans and putting them in bags of 10 and 100 and 1000 and how you can count the bags to get the number of cans. For some reason, this flipped that little switch in Daniel’s head and he spent the rest of the day hysterically demanding to collect cans, wondering where our cans were, drawing pictures of cans, making bags for cans, making signs to record how many cans he had already collected (1), making more signs to record his can collecting goal (1,000,000) and writing notes to the neighbors to ask for their cans, including this one to our next door neighbors who are very firmly DINKy, seriously unamused by the charm, energy and good looks of my children and luckily, in Belgium for the summer:
Yes, that’s right. He wrote Miss Jennifer and Master Cris and no, I don’t know where he got that from. He also wrote the number of cans he wanted from them at the bottom: 234 cans. He is writing notes to all the neighbors, most of whom have a broader sense of humor than them next door.
Now, a few days later, his cooperative parents having acquired and drunk several cans of this and that, Daniel has almost ten cans which he carries around in a bag he has labeled 10 and color coded according to his grand plan. At least he has stopped pleading to be allowed to go through the neighborhood’s garbage cans. There’s a lot of stuff I’m cool with but garbage trawling when you’re too short to really see over the lip of the can is beyond my ability to cope.
I was telling this tale to another neighbor, one of the wonderful ones, and she looked at me for a moment and said, “Hmm. I’m beginning to see where Daniel might get his obsessiveness from,” and looked very pointedly at me. And now I’m completely obsessed with wondering if I am obsessive and why she thought I might be obsessive and what I’ve been obsessing about in company and whether this is a grand personality flaw or just an amusing quirk, and — oh damn.
I’m not sure how that story demonstrated *your* obsessiveness to your neighbor, but it sounds like a very sweet and annoying little project Daniel has underway. Tell him to write me anytime, but unfortunately, I don’t usually drink stuff in cans.
This falls into the “If I only hadda nickle for everytime my kid asked me for a can . . .” catagory. Obssessive kids. Whadda hoot.
I love this story! Ironically enough, I just posted this morning about trash cans AND obsessiveness. Wack! I love that you’re reading my blog, btw, and I love yours. You da bomb. Did Ellen tell you I had lived in beautiful Philadelphia for 2 years? I love Philly.