What A Boy Wants.
Mood:  happy
Topic: Sam
What does a boy want? If you're talking about Sam, the answer has become everything. That's probably the biggest sign that they have outgrown being babies and have started being kids: They see things on T.V. and start asking you for them. When they learn the magic words Mommy, buy me that, you know that you are in for a world of pain.

Sam's overriding desire at this moment is a light sword like the ones in Star Wars. Oh, he has his Harry Potter sword, and he is forever fighting and slaying things with that, but for Sam, a light sword has become the Holy Grail. Every day on the way home, he announces that his daddy is buying him a light sword, and I have to explain anew that Daddy is not buying him a light sword today, but maybe he will get one for his birthday. Sam's birthday is over two months away, and to Sam, it might as well be in ten years. He looks forward to his birthday the way a nymphomaniac looks forward to walking into a crowded bar.

The light sword is one thing; the things he sees on T.V. every day are another. When we get home in the evening, he watches Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Teen Titans. That's what the big kids watch; no Barney for Sam. He's moved beyond all that. But good Lord, I had forgotten the insidious commercials they show with these cartoons.

Every sixty seconds, it's a new desire. Lilo & Stitch frozen meals. Action figures. Some new and sugary breakfast cereal. It's a barrage of new things to covet and crave, punctuated with frequent repetitions of "Mommy, will you buy me that?" Worse, Sam has a fantastic memory. He can see an ad on Wednesday, and he'll still be bugging me to buy him the product in question on Saturday.

So I've been having to say no a lot. "You don't need that" is my litany, repeated again and again and again. I suppose I should take comfort in the fact that Matt isn't yet advanced enough to ask for much more than juice or a cookie. Just imagine, in two more years I will be hearing Mommy, will you buy me that? in stereo. But I'm all set. I've got a big bag of No with their names on it.