A Father’s Pride

Mar. 05, 2006 - 7:10 pm

Yesterday, Oldest Boy was at Disneyland for a birthday party, just him and four girls (along with the 70,000 or so others around, I’m sure). The Birthday Girl and the other one he knew have had different levels of crushes on him for the last 2 years (and he’s only 11), but at the party he was particularly enamored of a friend of the Birthday Girl, who he just met then. He described her as a “girl version of me… crazy, funny, more than a little weird, and smart acting stupid.”

Yep; that sounds like him all right.

He had a blast; Disneyland passes are a necessity when you live 2 miles away.

But that’s not the thing that fills my heart with Fatherly Pride. My youngest son (at 6) has been reading up a storm lately; his teacher has even commented with a certain amount of awe at his progress. But last night was my (and his) proudest moment… I asked him what he wanted to do, and he looked through the DVDs for a movie, eventually pulling out Star Wars (after a false start with “Revenge of the Sith”).

When the movie started, and I told him how when I was in High School when it first came out, the opening music and “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…” filled me with awe, because I knew I was in for a treat, each and every time I saw it. Then…

He started reading The Crawl to me.

Yeah, I had to pause it a couple times to let him catch up, but it was most certainly A Moment for me.

Tonight: some of that 30-year old Highland Park I brought back from Scotland…