My son is sitting on the toilet reading a book about how to demolish a building. (Or at least looking at the very cool pictures of buildings being demolished.) I’m outside. Suddenly he yells, “I’m mad!”
So I walk over. “Why are you mad?”
“I’m mad at John Boehner!”
You cannot make this stuff up. What has my wife been telling him?
Later that day we were looking at the newspaper. He asks me, “Is that President Obama?” pointing at a picture of President Obama. (Think something the President has recently done. On the internet.) I say, “Yes, son, that is.”
“He’s mad at John Boehner!” he says.
Now, my son knows what John Boehner looks like. That is because we live in D.C. We ride the subway every day, and he likes to grab Politico from the newspaper machines in front of the Jenifer Street elevators at the Friendship Heights metro. He looks at the pictures and I identify the people. “Who’s that?” “That’s Marco Rubio!” “Who’s that?” “That’s a random fellow in an insurance advertisement!” Etcetera.
But I have no idea how he picked up the mad part. He’s right, of course. But how? He also mysteriously told my wife one day, “You don’t have your wallet!” with no way of knowing. ESP? Probably not. And certainly not how he knows that the President is mad at the Speaker. But it’s amusingly weird.
I guess it’s an occupational hazard of growing up in the District of Columbia. I guess it’ll only get worse from here. We’ll try to protect his sister.
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