Fair Trade

#5 collects special money. People who know him bring him back leftover currency when they go out of the country.

zimbabwe-money-poster-wall — Image: anorak.co.uk

We have friends who come from a missionary family in Zimbabwe, where for several years inflation has been out of control. These friends brought #5 back a $250,000 Zimbabwe bill from a visit in 2009. He thought it was the coolest thing he’d ever seen and at first thought he was rich. But to put it in terms the kids could relate to, our friends told them that you would need a whole wheelbarrow full of money to buy a pizza. When he understood the actual value of bill was pretty much nil, he still thought it was neat.

Zimbabwe’s political climate is painful and heartbreaking and we worry a lot about our friends when they’re over there, which is most of the time. So like I always do to deal with something that sucks, I’m on the lookout for anything to lighten up the situation. In my family, you don’t usually have to look far.

One day, #5 came home from school with some extra Bakugans. If you’re unfamiliar with these, they’re one of the most popular non-electronic toy for boys, kind of a more intricate version of a Transformer, or as the company describes them:

Exploding Sphere!

#5: Look at all the Bakugans Matthew gave me!

Me: That’s great, sweetie.

Something about the sound as he dumped them out made me stop what I was doing and actually go over and look at all the Bakugans Matthew gave him. There was a pretty sizable pile.

Me: Wow, that’s a lot. How many did he give you?

#5: All of them. Like thirty.

Me: You mean all the ones he had?

#5: Yes.

Me: Why would he do that?

#5: I traded him.

Me: What did you trade him?

#5: My $250,000 Zimbabwe money.

My mouth fell open. I could just imagine the exchange. Matthew probably thought he was going to take this $250,000 bill out and be able to buy every Bakugan ever made, a sports car, a Wii and every possible game for it, a jetpack, and still have money left over to treat every pretty girl at the elementary school to a new pair of Uggs.

Me: Did you tell him it’s basically worthless?

#5: He didn’t ask.

Our school gives a directory out every year with all the families’ phone numbers and addresses in it. I like to think it was created specifically for times like these. I looked up Matthew’s phone number and called. I got his middle-school-aged sister on the phone, who told me neither Matthew nor their mom were back yet. As I explained the situation, I grew confident that none of this information was ever going to be passed on.

Me: Just do me a favor. Tell Matthew, and your mom, that if he gets bummed out and wants his Bakugans back, we’ll trade back. Okay?

Sister: Yeah, sure, okay.

It took much longer than expected. A couple of weeks, in fact. But eventually, Matthew discovered that he couldn’t even buy a single thing with that bill, and the trade was made back.

And that’s the story of how #5 rented thirty Bakugans on the cheap for two weeks- with a little help from President Mugabe.

Mr. Contradictory Answers the Question

I’m in the bathroom, doing my makeup, trying to get ready for work. #5 runs in.

#5: Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

He’s never asked this before.

Me: Well, that’s the question, isn’t it? Nobody knows.

#5: Nobody?

Me: Nobody.

#5: Really.

I look at him. He’s totally channeling all of his teen sisters right now and has the sarcasm and the look down perfectly. This is not the answer he’s looking for. Also, he doesn’t believe me.

#5: Nobody?

Me: Yeah, no one knows. I mean there are all these scientific papers and stuff, but for every one that says it’s the egg, another one says it’s the chicken. So no one knows. For real.

I go back to putting on mascara.

#5: You know, when you open your mouth and mash your chin into your neck like that you look weird.

(runs out of bathroom)

He’s right, of course. I do look weird.

(runs back in bathroom)

#5: Well, which one do you think it was?

Me: Mmm. I think maybe it was the chicken.

#5: I think it was the egg.

(runs out of bathroom)

Of course he thinks it’s opposite of whatever I think.

(runs back in bathroom)

#5: It was the chicken.

Me: Yeah?

#5: Definitely the chicken.

Me: You mean I was right?

#5: No. I mean it had to be the chicken because how could an egg just randomly come to earth?

I picture a spaceship, piloted by a solo egg. He won’t admit he’s agreeing with me, so I switch tactics, because I can be stubborn too.

Me: Well, what do they teach you in Sunday school? That God is all-powerful, right?

Solely by the kindness of some of our excellent friends, the kids go to Sunday School pretty much every week.

Me: If he can make a chicken, surely he could make a self-hatching egg one time, right?

#5: {silence}

I’m totally not playing fair. He has no problem contradicting me, but stops short of contradicting God. It’s the entire reason I played the God card.

Me: He made Adam, right? So an egg is like, no big deal.

#5: Who’s Adam?

Me: Seriously?

#3, passing by: Wait, what did he ask?

Me: Who’s Adam.

#3: Isn’t it, like, Adam and Eve or something?

Me: {sigh} Yes. Yes it is.

#5: It was the chicken.

(runs out of bathroom)

Time, Out At My Boss’s House

My boss watched the kids last Sunday.

He offered.

“For fun,” he said, though at the time he made the offer we were at a going away party for a colleague and I’m not entirely sure he was sober enough to be making that kind of an offer. When it turned out that none of our sitters were available because one was in Hawaii and one was in Spain and the others were out of state (yeah, it’s killing me too) we took him up on it. He didn’t back out when we gave him the chance. In fact, he made us all breakfast when we dropped them off.

#5’s first words to him upon entering the apartment were, “I know bacon when I smell it!”

My boss has a ten-year-old Vizsla. Currently, a temporary bonus dog that belongs to the other guy who mixes my show is staying there: a ten-month-old teacup chihuahua named Vato (that’s Spanish for Dude).

Um, he’s awesome. I loves him.

Vato has a bark control collar. Instead of shocking the dog when it barks, the collar sprays the dog in the face with a refreshing burst of citronella.

If you’ve read about them here, you know that the Puggle and the Fuggle are horribly trained dogs. Or, more correctly, they have us trained very well. Barking’s a problem. We even got a ticket one time, for the barking. I’m thinking about giving the Vato collar a try, though knowing my dogs either Casey will make Jack do all the barking for both of them, or else they’ll develop a citronella habit and bite open their collars to start mainlining it.

Here was the kids’ day with my boss (who has actually known them longer than I have):

He took the kids and the main dog plus the bonus dog for a walk in Central Park, where #5 almost fell into the boat basin; #2 and #3 renamed Vato PC, for Precious Cargo; #5 asked to be carried on the walk back to the apartment, to which my boss replied that he could only be carried upside down, which #5 agreed to until the point where he started falling out of his pants because gravity was working against him; and finally they came back to the apartment where they played an epic game of Monopoly and ate Chinese food.

(#5 keeps talking about how much money my boss has. I finally figured out he’s talking about the Monopoly game, which is some modern version that appears to be adjusted for inflation and has $500,000 bills.)

Then they went to the drug store where he bought them $36 worth of candy and did his damnedest to have them eat at least $20 worth of it before I came back.

When I came to pick them up after work, #5 immediately said to me, “Don’t ever leave him in charge of me again!” I asked what had happened but it took a minute to get the story, because #5 was shifting back and forth between the little boy stubbornness of trying to appear wronged and starting to realize that what had happened was very, very funny, and my boss was literally doubled over laughing so hard he couldn’t get the words out.

While Vato was not wearing his bark control collar, #5 barked into it, and it controlled him.

It is unclear exactly whose idea this was.

As we were leaving, #5 gave my boss this parting prediction: “You’re going to be a really great parent, and a really terrible parent. Great because you’ll buy your kids lots of candy, and terrible because you’ll let them get squirted in the face.”

When you were a kid, what did you think made for a great parent? What’s your favorite thing to do with other people’s kids?