TV InterActive

This small place in cyberspace was reserved for stories I might forget. That was the idea. Witness the incident, write it down. Save and nurture it for present viewing among ... whomever ... and maybe when the Boy becomes the Man he'll get a kick out this.

There's one incident I'll never forget, but I'll write it down here as a precurser to something that happened this morning, if only to make the post longer.

It's three Easters ago and the Boy is still in diapers. He's started to speak. His vocabulary is small but growing. The parental challenge is to interpret the words that come badly formed out of his mouth but which he understands. The beginning of verbal communcation.

We are at my wife's sister's home, a lovely house over looking the water, a "grown-up" house, my wife and I would call it. Large, spacious, "adult". A two-car garage. They had recently annexed some of the garage to create an office for my sister in law, the psychologist. A locked door connected the office with the rest of its former self.

The Boy came trundling in from the office one morning and he was chattering. After a moment, I realized that there was a definite pattern and purpose to his chatter. He was saying the same word over and over again. "Ah-bree, ah-bree, ah-bree, ah-bree." I tried to make sense of what he was saying and couldn't. He was similarly frustrated that I wasn't getting whatever he was saying. I never did get it. My wife was the one to figure it out.

Mamma: He's saying "Abre".

Abre (Ah-bray) is spanish for "open". The Boy had found the locked door to the garage and wanted to go through. This he was communicating to us with "Abre!" that he was pronouncing "Ah-bree!". He (and Mamma) had learned this word from children's TV program Dora the Explorer. On the show there were recurring scenes with doors that only spoke spanish. Want to go through the door? You have to say "abre".

Great, I thought. It's tough enough figuring out what he's saying in English - which is a language I know.

Flash-forward a few years. This morning, the Boy (who is in french immersion and knows words in four languages), is busying himself with the Tinkertoy set, trying to build the stand-up bass from the picture on the front of the box. On TV is an epsiode of Dora the Explorer.

Dora: Te amo! In English, "Te amo" means I love you! Say "Te Amo! Say Te amo!"
Boy: I'm busy, Dora....