What's Crash-Crash?

This one makes me a little sad in the "inevitability of time" sense of things.  It made me want to watch Interstellar again because for all of great science in it (and there is a LOT, and what isn't great stands up to considerable scrutiny), I could tell from the trailers what it was really all about and the story is basically laid out for the audience very early on when Matthew McConaughey's character says "Once you're a parent, you're the ghost of your children's future."

So, I picked James up the other day at school and he was not thrilled to see me.  This is pretty normal, though.  If we pick him up before all of his closest friends are already gone, he flips out.  Usually groaning dramatically, sometimes hitting the floor with his fists, sometimes grunting in frustration, just generally carrying on and making us feel bad for being "too early".

For the record, I have a pretty good idea where that comes from.  There's a reason why cousin (who is of an age with my mom) started calling me "sog" and it had everything to do with the way I acted when I had to stop playing with her son Kent.

I try to approach these incidents constructively, though,  and this day while he was flipping out on the carpet, I sat down cross-legged across from him and waited for him to finish the performance.  While I was waiting his friend Lizzie struck up a conversation with me.  She's a really social kid.

So we talked for a minute before James really got it that this show wasn't going to work, and he sat back up.  I tried explaining to him that if he wants more time he has to ask for a few more minutes and maybe I can accommodate the request but I'll never give in to these tactics he's using.  Then Lizzie decided to join the discussion too.

Lizzie:  James?  Why don't you want to go home? 

James (thinking for a moment):  Because when I go home my brother wants to play Crash-Crash and I don't want to! 

Lizzie:  What's "Crash-Crash"? 

James: A game my brother made up and its sooooooo boring!

And this is what took me completely out of the conversation and got me thinking about how in a lot of ways I'm just an observer now.  He's starting to reach the point where he would rather play with his friends and his brother isn't "cool".

Daniel, for his part, still very clearly idolizes his big brother, but the day that changes is coming too, I'm sure.

Anyway, all that said, that was earlier last week and the video here was taken after that, so Crash-Crash as a game isn't quite dead yet.  So I'll leave on an up-beat note.