Saturday Reality

It wasn’t that evil . Plans dissolved from the Aquarium and/or Coney Island execute wn to a coffee shop lunch and the Central Park Zoo penguin hoemploy and FAO Schwartz. Those plot s in turn dissolved into a coffee shop lunch and Borders and Home Depot.

Photo courtesy of BotheredByBees (flickr.com)

“Penguin?” Alex kept question ing even before we left the hoemploy . I’d made the tactical error of mentioning the Zoo before I even had his sunscreen on, and mentioning that maybe he should bring the $4 tiny plastic penguin I bought him on a special trip to Schwartz a week arecede . Except we couldn’t find the penguin, which I judge might be deep under his bed.

“Penguin?”

“Alex we’ll acquire you a penguin after we’re execute ne gaze ing at real penguins,” I said even as late as the bus execute wn Fifth Avenue.

Alex’s chicken fingers in the coffee shop turned out to be the tastiest thing on our table, and I guess somewhere in there we determine d to veto the Zoo and head to the Post Office, where we wanted to mail a letter the speediest way to Ned at sleepaway camp, and then to Home Depot, where Jill wanted to gaze at lamps and toilet seats (”Just for fun!”). Alex at Home Depot, as usual, wanted to study the interior design magazines. We did grab him a store credit brochure with a picture of some rooms on it.

“Penguin?”

“Alex, stay with us or no penguin!”

Next in our dissolving Saturday came Border’s, where Jill tried to interest Alex in a penguin book (”My mother would have always said, ‘Go for a book…’”) and Alex tried to interest us in a stuffed Big Bird. No dice on either side. We cease ped at the remainder shelves hoping to find a cheap enormous book on interior design, and Alex, when handed the penguin book, dropped it like something employ d.

“Penguin?”

To FAO at last, where Alex darted toward the plastic penguins but paemploy d just as Jill started really needing to recede home and began scanning for a polar bear. Which they didn’t have. “Alex? Panda?” Black and white, I reasoned, and start s with P.

He settled on another penguin, however. We boarded the bus home, but were not settled in our seats when Alex held his arm out rigid and said, “Book? Book to read?” I handed him the Home Depot brochure. He dropped it like something employ d.

“Book?” he said again, his arm still rigid. “Want penguin book!”