The Crazy Eye and Other Happy Tales

Have you ever seen a 16-month old bow up on a 28-year-old man? Well, I have. Let me give you a little bit of background. It appears that my son has inherited a lot of qualities from me – my obsession with television, my quick temper, and my impatience to name a few. But one thing that he has unquestionably inherited from his father is the crazy eye.

At this point, you might be asking, what’s the crazy eye, Kate? Well, I’ll tell you. The crazy eye is the look that Sutton gives me right before he blows up in an angry rage. Now, I don’t want to make him seem like a violent man, so let me explain that the crazy eye is something that the O’Neal household sees, at most, twice a year. I’ll admit that I’m a bit of nagger…and by bit of, I mean hell of. I nag 24/7, from dawn until dusk, 365 days a year (I like to take leap day off). It’s a talent that I’ve cultivated over the entirety of our relationship, and second to my eye for expensive clothing and weak work ethic, it’s one of my proudest accomplishments. You see, it’s hard to keep a good nag going. Take the trash for instance. You can’t just make a blameless remark that the trash needs to be taken out and be done with it. No. You have to say it twice within 30 minutes with an accusatory twinkle in your eye and then again at the hour mark. After that, you have to start leaving post-its in opportune places, like on the bottle of his depression medicine or the car steering wheel for when he’s almost got up the nerve to leave you. It takes dedication and a total disregard for the feelings of the nagged.

And ninety-nine times out of hundred, the trash ends up in the can, and we move on to the next naggable offense. But that one-hundredth time is where the crazy eye comes out. It’s a look that all at once says, “Stop right there…I’ve had enough… and I wonder what your head would look like stuffed and mounted.” When I see the crazy eye, I know that I have two options: the first is to give up and walk away (which never happens), and the second is the haymaker of every woman’s arsenal…I cry and blame it on hormones.

So the other day, Sutton, Suttie, and I were hanging out in the playroom. We had a Mickey DVD in because, to my one-year-old, Mickey is Nirvana. As we’re watching, Suttie saunters up to the DVD player and starts pushing buttons. So naturally, Sutton firmly tells him “No” and bats his little hand away. And this is the point where sh*t got real. Suttie squares up his shoulders so that he is standing face to face with his dad and bows up at him, as if to say, “Do you want some of this?” And of course, pasted on his formerly angelic face is the crazy eye. At this point, Sutton and I are doing everything we can to keep from laughing because the visual is priceless in its hilarity. But at the same time, we’re trying not to condone this street-fighter behavior. Suddenly, Suttie reaches his hand up slowly toward Sutton's face, and we're thinking "Is he going for the eyes or the throat?" He lets his chubby hand get about an inch from his dad's nose and then he swats it ever-so-gently, as if he was flicking away a fly. Luckily, that was the only damage done that day, because, at that moment, Suttie saw a cracker remnant in the corner of the room. That Wheat Thin may have saved his father’s life; I guess we’ll never know.

So, what’s the moral of this particular post? There isn’t one. I’m just telling you that if we have a play date, my kid’s using prison rules so try not to get shanked.