We are currently in the midst of having guests. My in-laws are here, and will be until after Easter, and two of my brothers-in-law are scheduled to arrive tomorrow night. My friend Pete, his wife Yvette, and their 4-year old son (my Godson) Matthew came to visit as well, and just left us earlier this week.
It’s been great having a full house, and it was especially great having Matthew around. It’s funny – two months ago, we were in the routine of coming home to an empty house after work, but for the past week or so we’ve grown used to tripping over our new dog (Mac) and finding miniature dinosaurs in our houseplants. And Matthew is a funny, funny, little guy, with quite an imagination. On the nights he had to take a bath, we could hear him from downstairs, playing the hero in the epic underwater battle between a plastic lobster and a rubber pterodactyl.
Matthew said a lot of innocently hilarious things throughout the course of his stay. And I don’t want to come across like Bill Cosby here – these kids say the darndest things! – but one thing in particular cannot go unmentioned.
Last Saturday we all went to a spring training game, and then out to eat afterwards. At the table, Matthew was sitting next to me, coloring in his coloring book. I looked up for a minute, and I saw him staring at my left hand. I got his attention, pointed to my wedding band and said, “Hey, Matthew, do you know what this is?” Without even missing a beat, he responded as such:
“It’s a handful of garbage.”
I don’t know where this came from, but the clarity and force with which he said it was amazing coming from a kid who calls his plastic toy lobster “losper.” Nevertheless, that is Matthew’s stance on the sanctity of marriage. Don’t even get him started on our nation’s foreign policy! We miss him already.
