Soapbox

So I’ve got this kid… and I noticed that whenever he was in the garage, he would put his fingers in his ears. It was strange, but there’s always something strange with him, so at first I just ignored it. I thought- maybe the car sounded really loud in the garage or something. Whatever. Then he started doing it in department stores too. If you insisted that he hold your hand, he’d use his free hand to plug his ear on that side and hunch his shoulder up over the other one, like some kind of weird "Heil Hitler" salute.

So, finally I decided this was just too weird- and annoying- and I asked him WHY he was doing this strange thing! Of course, he couldn’t hear me… because his fingers were in his ears. He got very upset when I tried to remove them there in the store. So rather than get into a scene, I gave a heavy sigh (I seem to do a lot of that with this child) and finished shopping, ignoring all the strange looks at my odd child in tow. After we got home I sat him down and asked again, "What’s going on, son?"
He looked at me and said, with not-quite four-year-old sincerity,

"Well Mommy, I need to have my fingers in my ears because I don’t want to hear the dummies."
"Dummies?"
"The dummies on the tables in the store."
"Oh, you mean the mannequins in the store? Why do you- what is there to hear from them?"
"They talk to me, and I don’t want to hear them."
"They… TALK to you?"
"Well, only the ones without heads try to talk to me."

Oh good: just the ones without heads. Because for a second I thought it was going to be something really weird…

When pressed (gently- it must always be gentle with him or you get nowhere) he couldn’t tell me what they say, because he has his fingers in his ears all the time so that he won’t hear them. Naturally. Quite logical. I should have thought of that.

Ok, so clearly this child is one of those unique, sensitive personalities, like Vincent Van Gogh or Mozart. Right. Either that, or he’s the type who will be found in a room someday painting thousands of pictures of Elvis all over the walls because the voices from outer space told him too. It’s anybody’s guess at this point.

Oh, and the problem in the garage? A little sleuthing and I learned that there’s a computer generated picture of Alfred E. Newman on the wall, left by the previous tenants. You guessed it; it talks too.

That one was easy. We took down the picture and put up one of Stephen’s own drawings. End of voices in the garage. The dummies were a little more tricky. I could hardly call Lazarus and ask them to put heads on all their mannequins. I think we’ve convinced him that if he just goes into the store and we say to the dummies, "Alright you dummies, I’m not going to listen to you right now, so just be quiet" then he might find that they are. So far, so good anyway.

None of this should come as too big of a surprise to us, since he is the same kid who was afraid of Jello (didn’t like the way it laid on the plate and wiggled at him) and "big strong potties" (I had to wait til he was across the room to flush them). It sounds funny to tell it, but what do I know? Are we just teaching him how to sublimate a problem? I mean, he’s so clearly different than other kids. Should he be in toddler therapy? How the heck is a parent supposed to know?

Is this one of those joys of parenthood you hear about?