Tropical Storm Cindy is heading for the city, but in the morning the sun is shining so I decide we should leave home quickly to get some outside time at the playground. Augie and Archie are sitting on Archie’s bed playing one of their favorite games: all this shit is mine and you can’t touch any of my shit.
Archie is five now and Augie is almost three. The key item at the moment is a book. It’s books a lot, but it could be absolutely anything: Legos, light sabers, sticks, rusted tin cans, rotten figs, busted printer parts, other shit they bring in from outside. Augie’s got the book, a Rainforest book featuring the Cat in the Hat, and Archie wanted it, which was super fun. But only for a minute, then Archie didn’t want it anymore, so Augie’s going, “Act like you want it again,” sitting there smiling, acting like he’s reading it.
“No, Augie, I don’t want it.”
“Yes you do want it.”
Augie repeats everything verbatim. With his bro he’ll just repeat and argue, but with me he’ll repeat and tag it with a question mark, and follow it with “why?” For example: “Whoa, Augie, you stunk up the room real bad.”
“I stunk up the room real bad?”
“Yes”
“Why?”
“Why’d you stink up the room real bad?”
“Why you stink up the room real bad?”
“No, you stunk up the room real bad.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Because you’re still a baby, I guess.”
“I’m a baby, I guess?”
“Yes, you’re a baby.”
“Why?”
“That’s what I want to know! It’s been fucking forever with the diapers!”
When it’s time to get dressed, Augie wants to pick out his clothes. Archie used to want to do that, but now Archie’s requests have gotten more sensible, like he wants to wear his Superman t-shirt with a snap-button shirt over top so he can pull it open and reveal the S on his chest. Augie’s requests, though, make no sense. Pink button-downs to sleep in. T-shirts over button downs like he’s Andrew McCarthy in an eighties flick. Pajamas over shirts over jackets, with a cape. He dressed himself once and came out with five shirts on, just the neck-holes only, like a giant infinity scarf, covering half his face, like the mujahideen in the mountains of Tora Bora.
I wrestle Augie’s clothes on as he’s kicking me in the face. The kid can do a lot for a two-year old. He can name half the characters in Star Wars, including Darth Maul and Kylo Ren and a bunch of characters from those stupid movies I never even saw. He can sing the melody of “I Wanna Be Like You” from The Jungle Book. He can keep a little rhythm and hit the melodies of a few other Disney tunes. He can catch a ball and throw one, forward even (Archie still basically throws backwards.) Quite impressive for age two. Flip side, he still shits in a diaper and kicks me in the face when I get him dressed.
Once out the door, we play one of his other favorite games: keep away, as I try to get them in their car seats. He loves this game, running around one side of the car, then the other. It’s June in New Orleans and a tropical storm is coming, so it’s hot, and I’m breaking a sweat, sprinting awkwardly around the car, trying to grab him by the shirt or by the waist or anything, trying not to turn an ankle or knock him over or hit a tree branch or drive him into the street. He loves it, laughing and squealing in delight, as I snatch his ass up.
Archie, meanwhile, has secretly carried a forbidden item out of the house, an arrow with a suction tip that he’s been carrying around for days, like a stripper with a vape pen, even sleeping with it. As we’re pull out, he produces the object with a satisfied, “Ha ha!”
“Good one,” I say.
“Daddy, do you know how I did it?”
“Do tell.”
“I acted like I didn’t care. Then we were already outside, and I had it!”
The kid has learned the basics of how to get away with shoplifting.
“That’s right” I say, reinforcing the lesson (am I bad?). “If you’re thinking about it, it’ll show and you’ll look suspicious. But if you can somehow forget you’re even doing it, you’ll get away.”
I realize this bit is eerily similar to a bit in Black Mass when Whitey Bulger tells his kid that if no one sees it, it never happened. At this point I know for sure I’m doing something wrong. Later that night Erin shows him how to place a needle on a turntable, and I think, that’s a pretty big damn day in a life, learning how to steal, and how drop a needle on a record, on the same day.
There’s a few other kids and parents at the playground because they’ve canceled camps because of the storm. Believe me when I tell you that nothing, I mean nothing, spurs New Orleanians to conversations with strangers more than perceived over-reaction and overabundance of caution in the face of approaching storms. Even the random six-year old climbing the rope structure in a bike helmet is indignant:
“Why did they cancel my camp?”
He’s asking me.
“Beats me, kid.”
“It doesn’t make sense. It’s not even raining, and it’s sunny.”
“I know.” This kid is going to do great in the Rouses checkout line someday.
“What camp do you go to?” I ask, thinking stupidly there’d be some simple answer, like, art camp or zoo camp. But no.
“Saint What’s-his-stan of the Immaculate Archdiocese of the Orthodox Corinthian Missionary.”
“Sounds fun. Hey, boys, we’ve got to go.”
No, I’m not trying to get them away from the Christ-child. Some time elapsed, okay? We played for like forty-five minutes. But it’s a blog, not a documentary. I’m taking them to the movies as a surprise, and I can see the dark clouds moving in. I want to get them in the theater before it unleashes, which I do, sort of. It’s started to rain when we get there, but it’s tropical storm bands, not like a regular thunderstorm, more windy and sporadic. In the car I take off their shirts and stuff them in my pants to keep them dry, so the boys aren’t cold and miserable in the super AC theater. Then I grab them both, one in each arm, shirtless, and we make a mad dash from the car to the theater. This is by far the most exciting part of the day. Archie is squealing and Augie is laughing, and when I put them down under cover, they both want to do it again.
Inside we’re hella early (NoCal whassup!) so we kill time in the arcade. The theater is actually kind of full for an a.m. show, for the same reason the playground was. Kids are running around the arcade, pretending to play, climbing on the motorcycles, throwing the air hockey paddles. With little ones in an arcade you get as much fun with no tokens. Augie picks up this giant AK-47 from a zombie shooting game. The thing is as big as he is, and he can barely hold it up, but he looks awesome holding it! And he knows what to do, making his shooter noises. The kid loves shooters. Everything is a shooter, sticks, kitchen utensils, rolled up towels, Legos. Augie loves to make shooters out of Legos. Archie uses them to make cakes.
We settle in with a couple big blue Icees, but we’re early, and it’s the pre-previews still. You know, obnoxious Mark Whalberg ads that somehow don’t become less obnoxious when you blow them up on a 30-foot screen and blast them in Dolby. Then the previews. Archie’s asking me when the real movie is going to start. I’m getting worried. Augie’s already climbing in and out of his seat. We’ll never make it.
But once the feature starts, Hollywood works its dark magic, and they make it through with only one little break in the middle. (They should bring back intermission for all kids movies.) The film is Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie, and it’s actually quite clever and very well done. Of course it’s pitched square at Archie and he’s howling laughing as toilet paper rolls are flying. Plus it gives him an excuse to say “diarrhea” a lot, which continues for several weeks.
On the way out we pass one of those hurricane simulators where you put money in and get inside a plastic box and get blasted by wind. Augie wants to try it, but once again we don’t need any tokens for this one, as I glance out the door to see Cindy barreling thorough the parking lot. Ah, summertime in New Orleans.
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