Monday January 6th, 2014

The exercise:

Write about: the climber.

I took Max back to StrongStart this morning for the first time in three weeks. He was obviously happy to be back there, getting into his usual toys and running around the school gymnasium during gym time.

It tuckered both of us out. He fell asleep on the car ride home, but unfortunately he woke up during the transfer inside and we couldn't get him back to sleep until (an admittedly earlier than usual) bedtime.

I certainly could have used a nap myself before having to go do my 3 to 9 shift at the gym and bowling alley.

Mine:

This morning during playtime at StrongStart Max was exploring the small kitchen setup as he often does. Part of that area consists of a short plastic dinner table surrounded by four little chairs.

What's that? You can see where this is going already? Hush.

I was sitting on the floor nearby while he fiddled with a basket of toy fruit that he'd perched on the table. Then I realized that he was in the process of pulling himself up onto one of the chairs so that he could kneel on it.

Before I know it he is standing on said chair, looking quite pleased with himself.

I lifted him back down... only for him to immediately do it again, of course.

He got distracted by something else shortly after that and by the time we got home I'd basically forgotten about it. After failing to get him back to sleep I was in the kitchen putting together his lunch while he entertained himself in the living room.

Now, the living room has been pretty well childproofed at this point. So I wasn't watching him too closely. I was aware that he was walking around carrying his wooden stool (a new trick he just learned, or found the strength for, in the last week) but I wasn't concerned.

Then I looked up from the vegetables I was chopping for him to find that he'd brought the stool over to the couch (which he has been attempting to climb up on by himself for weeks now) and was kneeling on it, preparing to haul himself the rest of the way up.

I got there before he managed to fall off, but I'm thinking that stool might need to be found a hiding spot for the next little while.

3 comments:

Greg said...

Heh, I think that falls under the heading of adorable actually! I'm guessing that your real concern here is that he'll fall off the couch if he gets up there unsupervised? I'd be inclined to let him keep the stool and get the hang of getting on to the couch himself though; he'll be much happier for having figured it out himself and proved it. But supervision is the key of course, and that takes time and energy :)

The climber
Another town, another name. This time I'd found a burned out wreck of an auto run off the road a little way out on the interstate and found a driving licence in there. The sun-dried corpse certainly didn't have a use for it now, and a bit of searching turned up a Social Security number, a library card and eighty bucks. So I became Michael DeWaat and sauntered into town.
The first shop on the main drag was a sports equipment store so I wandered in. People seem to have blinkers on a lot of the time; the kid behind the counter certainly did. The land around was pancake-flat, even if you cook them as poorly as my ex-wife did, and yet when I started looking at portables grapples, climbing ropes and cleats, he jumped to the obviously wrong conclusion.
"Y'all goin' climbin'?" he asked, chewing his gum a little faster as though the mental effort of speaking affected everything else too.
"In a manner of speaking," I said, smiling. I held my hand out, introduced myself, and spent fifteen minutes listening to him tell me about some rocks two hours drive away. While he was boring me silly with talk of chimneys and overhangs I picked out the kind of tools that work well with modern materials: cement, stone fascias, and not-well-maintained brickwork.
"Oh hey," he said with a grin. "You must be a spelunker!"
"Sure," I said, knowing that my daddy would have decked him for using big words like that.
"A caver," he said. I had no idea they had fancy words for things like that.
"Ayup," I said, unable to stop myself mimicking him. A caver, right. Because jewellery lives in caves, not penthouses, and everyone buying climbing gear has to be a sport-climber, not a cat-burglar.
I left with my gear and a map of the local caves. Hell, they might come in useful to hiding out.

morganna said...

Up to the mountaintop
Pulled inch by inch by aching muscles
Slowly mounting to the sky
Seeing the countryside spread out beneath
Definitely worth the work.

Marc said...

Greg - yeah, the falling off part is what worries me. Though he has learned how to get down by himself, so maybe it's not too big of a problem. Still don't want to give him too much room for mishaps quite yet though.

Hah, I quite like the attitude of your narrator. Sounds like he's bound for some interesting adventures :)

Morganna - I really like the line 'Slowly mounting to the sky'. Nicely done with this one.