Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Why Cade Will Never Like France....


It’s all my fault. But it was an innocent error on my part.

Last night I met Jay and Cade at Mazzios. Jay had a meeting at the school at 7:00 pm, I had a really busy/stressful day at work and….. well…. Um…. our house was trashed. There I’ve admitted it. I was gone all weekend and got home late Monday night. Jay tried the best that he could but it overtook us sometime Monday night. I didn’t have it in me to try and cook then clean the house so we ate pizza instead.

On the way home from Mazzios I made the mistake of asking Cade what he wanted for his birthday. Gone are the days of simple answers like a train or a tractor or a fire truck. He hummed and hawed around for awhile and then started saying something about Lego Batman and Mr Freeze. His favorite Wii game is Lego Batman and he is constantly talking about it. When I say constantly I mean constantly. If he’s not talking about it, it’s because he’s playing it and he’s having us come in the room to watch different parts of the game. Even though I’ve played every level with him I have to watch it over and over and over. When Cade started in on it last night I thought he was talking about the game. Of course he gave me the “you’re dumb, I’m frustrated” sigh and told me he’d have to show me on the computer.

As soon as we got home he booted up the computer and got on the Lego site. Yes, he did it all by himself and yes, it is a little scary. He clicked around and finally he showed me what it was he wanted. It was a Lego Batman, Batmobile and Mr Freeze sitting on the thing that he uses to freeze everyone. It was Cade’s dream toy, at least for this particular day. I had never seen one before so I clicked on the Shop button to see where I could get one and how much it cost. It didn’t look too bad in terms of Lego pieces….I didn’t think it would make Jay cry….at least not too much anyway. I was looking around on the screen but I couldn’t see a price anywhere. Finally in big red writing I spotted the words that brought an end to Cade’s dream of owning this toy. It said Sorry, item is not available in this country: United States. No wonder I hadn’t seen it, it doesn’t exist here.

Cade was so disappointed about it. He cried and cried and kept asking over and over why it wasn’t available. I kept telling him I didn’t know why, which was the truth. He wasn’t satisfied with the truth because he kept hounding me. Finally I told him a lie to get him off of my back. I said it was because of those crazy French, they won’t sell them in the USA. I wasn’t picking on France, it just happened to be the first country that popped in my head. Obviously they are sold in another country…I just don’t know which one.

Like every lie told, even small innocent lies, it always comes back to bite you. Now instead of wondering why the toy wasn’t sold here, Cade wanted to know why we never go to France. I know he was thinking we could just zip over there and buy one of these things. At this point I was trying to work on the house and he was following me around firing France/Lego Batman questions at me like there was no tomorrow. Finally he got tired of me answering I don’t know to everything and he went back to the computer to study the toy some more.

Later in the evening, as I was practically standing on my head trying to reach the trash can in our bathroom Cade came in with his conclusion to the problem. It was already out of my mind because I was focusing on my own house issues so I was a little confused at first when he said “Mom, it must be because of France”. “Batman’s suit is different and Mr Freeze is a lighter shade of blue than on the game.” “Yes, it’s all France’s fault that I can’t have that toy”. Not only does being a parent take a lot of patience it also takes a lot of self-control to keep from laughing when your kid can see you. Sometimes it’s really hard to wait until they leave the room.
P.S. The picture on the post is what he wants. If anyone happens to travel to "France" and sees this let me know.

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