Chatterbox

When I was small, my father would come home at night and ask my mother if I ever stopped talking. Once again, I am doing penance. Ethan enjoys spending the bulk of his day following me from room to room endlessly talking. He is usually explaining to me the many details of his present make-believe situation, in which I am required to take part. I’ve learned to tune him out until the point when he says “Are you ‘tending that mom?” and I respond “Yes, of course I’m pretending that.” This only backfires when my part of the ‘tending involved making a phone call or some other active participation on my part. Then it’s back to the drawing board when I ask for clarification. Honestly sometimes I try and follow the storyline, but it’s usually so complex that my brain shuts down somewhere between “’Tend your pipes are frozen and dey burst” and “’tend you want a pipe-fixer to come live with you and your 35 kids.”

Today, after he had been going on and on for a good fifteen minutes, I explained that I needed to go out to the car to get something but that he and his dog and his other pretend house-guests should make themselves at home while I was gone. I hadn’t been out there 30 seconds when I hear my bedroom window open to the cold January air and the explanation continue in a loud yell “’tend you had a . . . “. I’ll admit, I lost it. The baby was sleeping through the adjacent single-paned window and I was being followed around and yelled at about this pretend world. The driveway, the shower, the toilet, my nap, it doesn’t matter, the narration continues. And I started scolding him. Well, I hurt his feelings. I went inside and asked him what was so important he had to yell it at me out the window. He said he just had to tell me what we were pretending. I felt bad, but honestly, the voices outside my head were beginning to drive me a little batty.

I appreciate the fact that he is so creative. I think it’s great. I just wish that somedays his outer monologue would be an inner one.