A Boy and His Toy

Written for a Death to Stock creative writing prompt: Give a Yelp-style review to an experience from your last 24 hours. Part of a writing exercise for Big Cartel.

★★★★★

As a parent, you get a front row perspective of how fleeting childhood really is. A few happy moments here, a few sad moments there, but most of it is forgotten almost immediately after it happens. Thanks to Disney, you can manufacture more of those moments, and memorialize them with a picture or video if you're lucky.

We're currently watching our neighbors' blue betta fish while they're out of town. Perhaps due to its color, or maybe just because it's a fish, last night around 6 p.m. Jack started singing Dory's motto:

Just keep swimming,

Just keep swimming,

Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming,

What do we do, we swim, swim, swim.

As the parent of two kids I saw this as my opportunity to get a moment of peace, to get the boys to calm down before bedtime. I asked Jack if he wanted to watch Finding Nemo, and he said yes, of course.

But on the way to the couch, he saw a toy: Sheriff Woody ($36.99 from Amazon). He picked it up and asked if we could watch Toy Story. Yes, of course, I said. I turned on our Apple TV, found Toy Story 3 ($19.99 from iTunes), and pressed play.  (Because Jessie is one of his favorite characters, he doesn't like the original Toy Story as much, since she didn't show up until Toy Story 2.)

Then that boy crawled up on the couch next to me, snuggled up under my arm, snuggled Woody up under his arm, and enjoyed the show.

I got my moment of peace, all for $56.98. After a full night's rest, they'll be back at it: feeding our house guest, yelling at the top of their lungs, and chasing each other around. Until you get to that next moment, as a parent, what can you do? Just keep swimming.