Man Date

I got back from my Saturday morning run and Krischan was already sitting on the couch, engrossed in one of the latest video games that is so above my pay grade I couldn’t tell you what it was or how it was played if my life depended on it.   I asked him if he wanted me to fix him the usual for breakfast (frozen waffles) only to find out his Yia-Yia already made them for him.  I remember the last time Cindy made him waffles he wouldn’t eat them because they weren’t ‘crunchy like G-Pa’s.’  I asked Krischan what changed and he told me he ‘showed her how to make them.’  Apparently there’s more than one way to turn a toaster oven on. 

We had the whole day in front of us with nothing official on our agendas, freeing us up to do what Krischan refers to as ‘man things.’  We started the day by running a couple of errands that resulted in a couple gallons of ice cream we didn’t really need and a large bag of gummi candy that would be ancient history well before lunchtime Sunday.  We came home and had lunch: Spicy chicken sandwiches and veggie straws.  Let me be the first to say, if there’s a five-year old on the planet who likes vegetables more than Krischan then he must be a rabbit.  He looked at the veggie straws, held up a red one and said ‘ooh, this one is tomato!’  Then he asked if he could have a tomato while pushing the chicken sandwich (‘it’s too spicy!) to the side. 

After lunch we went down to the basement to assemble a weight bench we will be using in the months ahead to ‘make our muscles bigger.’  While I removed what must have been 1,000 pieces out of the 2’ X 4’ cardboard box, Krischan picked up Cindy’s five-pound hand barbells and proceeded to flaunt his muscles while I was trying to distinguish those 1,000 different parts that the directions referred to by part number but apparently the manufacturer didn’t think it important to indicate these part numbers on the parts themselves.  It’s a good thing I had my trusty assistant to help, because it was a lot easier having Krischan bring me the 15 or so parts that MIGHT be ‘Part # 127’ than it was for me to get up from my seat each time to siphon through the parts until I found the right one. 

The entire construction process took the two of us about four hours.  All I had to show for that time was a sore back from bending over, a sore right arm from tightening about 500 screws and twice that many bolts and a patience that was on the verge of detonating.   Oh yeah: And a really great weight bench that in all honesty will never give me a workout nearly as strenuous as the one it gave me today while assembling it.  As for Krischan, he discovered the batteries in his remote-control motorcycle still had life, that a lot of my Florida Gator memorabilia doubled as playthings (he walked around all afternoon wearing my authentic leather football helmet) and that his G-Pa could build really big things all by himself (at which point I reminded him that I couldn’t have done it without his help). 

We then retired to the couch and turned on the Florida-Arkansas basketball game.  Krischan noticed the Florida Gator logo in the middle of the court and said ‘everyone likes the Gators’ and noticed that the fans on television were all cheering for them.  He said ‘I like the Gators’ before telling me that ‘the Gators have 55 and the Hogs have 47.’  This surprised me on several levels: (1) I didn’t know he could read double-digit numbers, (2) I never told him the opposing team was the Hogs and (3) I didn’t know how he could distinguish which team had which number of points so I asked him about all three.  In order: (1) ‘G-Pa, I can count to one hundred!’ (2) ‘They have hogs on their uniforms and the Gators will win because gators eat hogs.’ (3) ‘I know you’ve tried to teach Yia-Yia that when the teams are listed on the screen side-by-side the home team is on the right and when the teams are listed one on top of the other the home team is on the bottom, and today the Gators were listed on the right.’  (I totally made that last one up but in the hopes that Cindy will read this one day maybe it will sink in once and for all.)

Florida ended up winning the game (gators eat hogs, remember?) and Krischan summed it up best when he said:

‘That was the best football game I’ve ever seen.’