Snippets of Conversation on and off the Poker Table part two

So where was I. Starting explaining why I'm a pretentious prick... bragging about my kid, or writing far too long about him, and teaching him sign language. Anyway, that's how I've been keeping busy during the holidays away from the Poker Texas Hold em table.

The kid knows how to tell me... More food, more bottle, more Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, and it was really useful, because instead of him going into a cry because we were denying him something, I guess, he's would simply tell us what he wants. I have a feeling from what I’ve heard about children growing up, “More” is going to be a permanent fixture in his vocabulary.

Right now he's also wearing out the head shake for “No.” Time for bed? I think basically he’s learned all he’ll ever need as far as communicating with mom and dad. If you can boil it down to two words it’s “more” and “no.” So, now that he knows all that he knows to get by in life with language time to teach him how to learn poker.

Still, as warm as it feels to be able to communicate with my spawn in private, when I go out in public and I am signing with my baby, it's real hard not to feel like a pretentious prick. It's like wearing a sign around your neck that says you buy into anything and you are basically over parenting. You have a Swedish contraption that will turn my kid into Einstein by tickling his toes… I’m just the sucker to buy that.

Okay, all that exposition to tell you this short story… as soon as the child saw the first fish tank all he did was sign "more" over and over. "More" penguins, "More" otters, "more" fish, "more" albino alligator you get the picture. Which doesn’t sound like much, but it really felt good to know how much he was enjoying the trip. Otherwise, he’d just stare blankly at the fish tanks and we’d only wonder if was having fun. No, that kid loved the aquarium. “More” “More” “More” and some clapping and laughing.

Sounds like he demands a lot, and he does, but since he knows the sign for please as well, sometimes he'd be polite about asking us, maybe one out of five times it’d be “More… Please.” That’s nice he’s polite about it, 20% of the time.

Okay, at the aquarium I also learned I have a new rule to live by. Used to be it would be only every once in a while a group would line up with a photo and stop all foot traffic in a touristy place (like the aquarium). Of course whoever was taking it would make it feel like an eternity by forgetting to remove the lens cap, not turning on the camera, hitting the flash instead of the take picture button, and basically looking as clueless as Miley Cyrus on saliva trying to operate a crane. Still, you’d politely wait and put up with it because it didn’t happen that often. Sure, you’d think in your mind can you possibly be any dumber as you bumble with your camera but you wait the minute or so for them to get the shot.

Now, though cameras are ubiquitous, I guess especially so after Christmas where everybody is a digital photog with their new toy. Every step at the beginning of the aquarium was into somebody's viewfinder and everybody was lined up next to a glass tank (which of course would just bounce their flash back) like they had never seen a fish in their lives. So, at a certain point, after trying to politely dodge a digital minefield, I've now become the dude I used to privately hate. I'm that guy that will walk through your picture, because really you can’t hold up the world every two seconds to capture a shot of boyfriend next to a jellyfish tank. Really… a jellyfish?