Friday, July 18, 2008

Aim High, Son, Aim High…

This post is from Chuck:

Jackson, being my son, loves The Muppets. He insists on watching “The Muppet Movie”, or as he calls it “the one with banjo”, at least once a day. Being that it’s a good wholesome movie, we would usually allow his request.

Jackson was getting to the point where he knew the movie, at least the first 20 minutes of it, really well and would make a running commentary on “what’s gonna happen?” or “where all people going?” (when all the patrons of the El Sleezo Café leave to get “drinks on the house”).

Jackson has also taken a liking to Fozzie Bear, who is featured in the El Sleezo Café scene. When that scene starts, Jackson gets excited and points at the screen and says “Woky, woky!” As you may remember, Fozzie Bears’ catch phrase is “Wocka wocka wocka!”

During one of the many screenings of “The Muppet Movie” we got to the El Sleezo Café scene and Jackson turns to us and says, “When me get big me want to be woky, woky.” Jackson could have chosen fireman, policeman, race car driver or even an astronaut like other little kids, but no, he wants to be a lovable, yet unsuccessful comedic bear puppet.

This is one of the increasingly common instances where I just didn’t know what to say. I just agreed and thought to myself, we need to work on this later. Is 3 years old too young for some career counseling? Is there some kind of ‘strengths test’ we can give Jackson to show him that he should focus on engineering or something like that instead of “…telling jokes both old and rare!” Needless to say, we are now limiting the number of viewings of The Muppet Movie.

1 comment:

Coolest people ever said...

I think it's never too early to start career counseling -- something I learned from Fern.

Joshua has been pining after a truck-driving career since birth (dump trucks, trash trucks, semis, whatever). I've tried to encourage that dream but from a slightly different angle --

"That would be cool! You know what would be even MORE COOL? Being the engineer who designs the trucks and decides how big the wheels are!!" (said with high excitement)

At least Jackson doesn't want to be Animal.