Tony Pickles, Oh Dang!

Anthony has always liked pickles. He used to LOVE pickles to the tune of sneaking entire bottles and finishing them off by drinking the juice but it’s now down to a more reasonable level of a few spears every day or so. He used to walk around with his skin slightly yellow and the scent of parfum de vinaigre in a cloud about him.

He’s graduated his love of pickles to the creation level. He now enjoys making them. We’ve made them a few times over the past couple of years together with a different recipe each time. His favorites are the ones with just dill and garlic. Some of them have been pretty great. In the last batch we threw in half a teaspoon of Peppercorn Mélange which adds a little kick. He wants to create a business and sell them. I tell him, sure. We can do that. And maybe we will.

He’s into art; all kinds. Have you seen his Flash movie? He’s working on a second one with an elaborate storyline of a fallen angel, his best friend and how he gets redemption. The drama gets quite diverse and deep. I think he’s going to be quite a storyteller. We bought him his own art supplies today. He got his first set of acrylics, a mixer tray with attached lidded pots, a 20″x24″ canvas, a brush set, a tiny pink soap and a color wheel.

He calls it his first ‘real’ painting. He’s very proud of it. He keeps checking with me to see if I think it’s ‘good’ or how much I think someone might buy it for. I tell him it speaks to me about duality and contrast. Maybe something about keeping things in balance. But that isn’t what he wants to hear so I tell him it’s fantastic and I mean it. I do think it’s fantastic. But I’m his mom, so it doesn’t count. I don’t know how many times since he was much younger that we’ve talked about art and how it’s so subjective and impossible to classify ‘good’ or ‘bad’ and yet that was one of the first questions out of his mouth when he finished. He also has a deep yearning to be famous. I don’t doubt that he will be someday. I just hope it’s for something that is worthwhile and not something he’ll feel bad about later like going on the first reality TV show that comes knocking. I hope he holds out for one that is really awesome like this one.

If I could afford to, I’d buy him a digital camcorder. He loves my phone because of its capability to create small movies. Here is one where he finally got me to smile even though we bet he couldn’t. We were at the track meet last Saturday waiting for his turn to go and run the 100 meter dash. It was a looooooong day. The day that never ended. The day where the parent volunteers kept not showing up at their assigned places and we had to listen to ‘Could the parent volunteers who signed up for the long jump please report for afternoon duty?’ every five minutes. Seriously. Long day. I didn’t feel like smiling, but his awesome finger tricks totally killed and I had no choice.

He likes to do imitations of people and is in a serious Listening to How That Sounds Again, phase. He says the same phrase over and over until he perfects how he wants it to sound or makes the same noise over and over until I think I might need to chop my ears off or until he finally gets it right. Here is an example. Oh, dang, he’s cute.