Mr. What

A day out with Papa normally starts with a) I'm bored or b) Angie is about to launch a cleaning frenzy and it's time for me to get the hell out of Dodge. Without giving it away, I would just point out that spring is a long ways away. 

'Hey, Tommy - you want to go to shoot some pool?'

'What?'

Tommy's latest thing that drives me nuts is that he says 'what?' to everything you say to him and I do mean everything. The other day I got so annoyed that I called him 'Mr. What'. I shit you not, he answered my name calling with 'What?'.

Tommy's first lesson was how to rack.

'Okay, the one ball goes at the top. Then around the edges, you just randomly rotate stripes and solids and the eight goes in the middle.'

'What?'

My patience was eventually able to explain to Mr. What how to set up a proper rack. Unfortunately, Tommy has inherited Angie's stubborn defiance of how things should be done and decided to follow her approach by simply doing things the way he thought they should be done. At least he met me somewhere in the middle and agreed to randomly place the striped balls. The solids, though, they had to be placed in numerical order going counterclockwise.

'Counterclockwise? But Tommy, that doesn't make any sense at all! If at all, then clockwise.'

'What?'

Rain Man completely ignored me and organized the balls the way that his brain wanted to. Whatever, at least the one ball was in its proper place.

The next challenge was trying to show Mr. What how to chalk a cue stick without breaking into a sweat, but his brain had already come up with its own method.

The next problem had less to do with the genetic wiring of Tommy's brain and more to do with the fact that he is not yet tall enough to hold the cue correctly. Unless you ask him, of course. Then he would condescendingly explain to you that his 'grip and stab' approach works just fine.

'Really, Tommy? Because you just missed the cue ball completely. Again. And this time I caught it on film.'

'What?'

There are many, many reasons why I am glad that I never chose my wife's profession and in one simple pool lesson, Tommy managed to cover just about all of them. When we got to aiming, though, Tommy reluctantly allowed me to give him pointers. Thank you, Master Tom.

With the right billiards teacher, even an overly opinionated six-year old can bank the eight ball into the corner pocket to win the game.

'That's great, Tommy, but you really don't need to stick your tongue out to aim.'

'What?'

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Ladder Talk: 
1) What was the best part of your day?
Peter: That Arman and Moritz came over.
David: That I could go with Sami to the ice-hockey game. 
Tom: That we was by the cats and I played Monopoly with Peter and David and, oh yeah, that you taked me to the pool play place. 

2) What was the worst part of your day?
Peter: That my belly was hurting. 
David: That Lauri wanted to go eight minutes before the end of the game.
Tom: That Simba scratched by playing Monopoly and that really hurt.

3) What would you like to do tomorrow?
Peter: I want to play with David, Tom, you and Mama some Clue.
David: I want to have fun and play something with Luca.
Tom: I'm going to play with Lauri.