Rhiannon Adelia Reinhard is a child of the 21st century: first blog at three; categorizes movies by format (e.g. DVD), figured out the CD player console by the age of two, and one of her favorite shows is the US version of The Office. Readers of The Cute Report will receive occasional posts of new, remarkable, and often funny events in the daily life of a now-five-year-old girl for whom beds still are for jumping and inanimate objects talk and have feelings (Disney-inspired animism, no doubt).
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Across the Universe
Rhiannon and I like to noodle with guitars. Usually I play and she sings (usually her original song, "The Rose in my Heart"). Sometimes she plays and I sing (usually something with a bear in it who is not too smart). The other day she wanted to get out the "tiny guitar", my grandfather's 1926 Martin mandolin which lives in its original case. The mandolin has a crack on the front of the body (it's been there for decades) and is missing a string, and is constantly out of tune (what mandolin isn't?). But we play it sometimes. And in this particular instance, Rhiannon decided to sing the Beatles' "Across the Universe", which she says is her second favorite Beatles song (right behind "Help!"). But she sings this song a whole lot more than the other.
The melody is there, but the words may seem new to you. I think she is singing from one of the studio outtakes in one of the boxed sets that we have....
Please note the Hannah Montana microphone/headset combo and Christopher Walken hair. That poor child....
Rhiannon. Cu-ute (as said with a Liverpudlian accent).
Andrew (Papa)
NOTE: If the video does not play in the window when you press the triangular "play" button, just move the slider to the right a little bit and the video should then play.
Parent/Teacher conferences are this week, and Jayni and I met with Miss Mark yesterday to learn about how Rhiannon is REALLY doing. Often Rhiannon comes home with tales straight out of Jacob's Ladder or from the mind of Marty Scorcese.
"Dad! Today Marissa broke her thumb off! And it hurt really bad!"
"Dad! Today Grace buried me in sand!"
"Dad! Today Vinnie said he was gonna whack a guy after school!"
Okay, so that last one was a fiction, but I figure it's only a matter of time before we have the Mean Streets of Milenio. Rhiannon's safe, but in her imagination, she's against the world. And she's ready for them.
Case in point:
Rhiannon has been learning a bit of self-defense both at school and at home. This fits in nicely with the "never take candy from strangers" and "never talk to strangers unless they are dressed as a clown and smell like beer and cigarettes" discussions. We've told Rhiannon about that special spot that all males have that is like a "break in case of danger" sign. It's our Achilles crotch.
So imagine our surprise when late in our interview with Miss Mark she asks us if Rhiannon told us what happened today. Uh-oh. We hadn't heard anything because Rhiannon is in Kids' Club after school.
"So what happened?"
It turns out that one of the boys in Rhiannon's classroom is a bit of an adventurer, and is very much into helping humanity evolve by experiencing new things. Apparently this includes pain and dares after watching his brother's collection of Jackass episodes. As Miss Mark tells it, this young man said, "hey, Rhiannon! Kick me in the nuts!"
Rhiannon looks at him, and never being one to turn down a good thing, agrees.
A minute later and the kid is on the ground asking to go to the nurse.
Jayni and I are trying not to laugh. We know it's wrong, but hey. The kid asked for it. Rhiannon was sent to the principal's office where she apparently told the principal something to the effect that she didn't know why she did it, but that it seemed to be a good idea at the time. For this response, she had to sit out of recess and think of a better answer. She drew a blank.
When we got Rhiannon home, we asked her about what happened, and then told her that it's not cool to kick a boy in the nuts.
"But he ASKED me to do it!"
Good point. How could you say no?
"And Hunter thought it was funny!"
Another good point. The kid knows funny. "Rhiannon, even though he asked for it, and even though it is kind of funny, you can't do that at school. And kicking a guy there should only happen if you are in danger."
Rhiannon and I were driving to Wal-Mart to buy a birthday present for her friend Maria. Maria is obsessed with the High School Musical movies, so we have been tasked with finding a shirt and some HSM make-up. Blech. On the way, Rhiannon strikes up a conversation with me. She has begun to say "so..." when she wants to begin a story or to let me know something. It's about the equivalent of Ronald Reagan beginning every statement with "well...".
"So...dad. Marissa's mom went to Chili's so much that she has to go to rehab."
Dad almost drives off the road. "What?"
"Marissa's mom loves pizza so much that she has to go to rehab! Marissa said so."
"I see. Do you think she'll be in rehab with Amy Winehouse?"
"No, dad. I don't think Amy Winehouse lives around here."
Today Rhiannon tried sushi. And for once, it was not a parent asking her to try something. Yesterday, Rhiannon and I were watching Saturday morning cartoons (which is something I did with my dad back when Scooby Doo was still a cartoon, had no Scrappy, and had animation that was considered cutting edge and humor that was "edgy"). But in the days of Cartoon Network and the Disney Channel, cartoons are everywhere. Luckily for us, we found "Sushi Pack".
"Sushi Pack" is a half-hour cartoon featuring five superheros who live in the refridgerator of a sushi bar. These heros are about six inches tall and are humanoid with sushi-like features (or maybe they are sushinoid with human-like features) and include the incomprehensible Wasabi, a crab-girl, a salmon boy whose weapons are salmon balls, an octopus-boy, and a purple thing. Together they use their sushi powers to overcome zany evil worthy of at least an old Scooby Doo episode.
So today at the grocery store, Rhiannon rides in the trolley shaped like a car with a wire basket in the back. She beeps and steers as if navigating the roads of Athens in an ill-fated taxi. I ask Rhiannon if she wants to see what real sushi looks like.
"Sure!"
So we drive to the deli counter and inside there are about a dozen boxes of pre-made sushi -- the kind that is friendly to American suburban palates (namely California rolls of about three different varieties). With red crab, green avocado, orange carrots, white rice, black seaweed, they look amazing to a five-year-old aesthete whose explorations in eating have only recently determined that macaroni and cheese is okay to eat.
"Dad! Can we PLEASE get that?"
"Do you want to try it? I like sushi a lot, and this pack has avocados in it."
"Yes!"
So into the hopper it goes, our final purchase. On the way home, we talk about sushi. Rhiannon is more interested in how sushi is like "Sushi Pack".
"Well, a 'pack' can mean a group of something, like a gang or a team, and it is also a short way to say 'package'".
Rhiannon gets the pun. "Oh! So we bought a sushi pack! And those guys are called 'Sushi Pack'".
"Yep! Very good, Rhiannon."
She returns to singing versionn 53 of her favorite, self-penned tune, "The Rose in My Heart".
When we get inside, I put away the groceries and then open the sushi pack and arrange the nine pieces in a circle on a princess plate, putting wasabi and pickled ginger in the middle.
Rhiannon is all of a sudden not so sure of her lunch choice.
"Can I just try a piece of avocado, dad?"
"Sure."
I give her a chunk. But it has of course become infused with the flavors of the crab, carrot, rice, and seaweed.
As soon as the piece goes into her mouth, she is out of her chair, bolting for the trashcan under the sink. Out it comes. Rhiannon returns to the table, a little embarassed.
"Dad, I do not want to have sushi again. Ever."
"Never ever, Rhiannon? I'm proud of you for trying it."
Today Rhiannon and I went online after school to play dressup. Thirty years ago kids would play with their Barbies or make their own paper dolls and dress them up as only five-year-olds can (or 36-year-old men). Heck, this was true thirty days ago with Rhiannon. Until she discovered, somehow, that you have an almost infinite range of online dressup games. The site we go to has opened up a special Halloween section. And within that section is possibly the coolest Flash game I have ever seen. You can carve your own pumpkin with your mouse. And it looks real. It even sounds real. And thankfully the site was cool enough to spend a lot of time in it without Rhiannon getting bored or asking where the dresses were. As if pumpkins ever wear dresses. Well, maybe they do. In Pumpkinland. Which I think is next to Albania. Anyhoo, you can carve your own pumpkin here.
Rhiannon has been using my PC for years, but mostly for writing. William Burroughs helped pioneer the quasi-metaphysical field of "cut-ups", a kind of mash-up of art and letters which ultimately gave birth to Magnetic Poetry. With Rhiannon, she goes subatomic with her typing, and mixes things up at the letter level, going beyond words and completely destroying everything you think you know about modern orthography. The point to this segueway is to illustrate that she is not too handy with the mouse. She knows it's a pointer. But she is still a little mystified by the click-and-drag phenomenon.
With the pumpkin carving, she finally got the hang of making holes in the pumpkin, or slashing it. I can only imagine a clan of miniature pumpkins watching in horror on the other side of the screen as Rhiannon slashed indiscriminately into the thick skin, right into the pulp, with dramatic hacks, creating horrible voids that looked neither human nor monster. She's kind of Japanese that way, in that the horror she created transcends convention into the unknown and aggressive that is truly freaky. After taking a few stabs at pumpkins (pun intended), she came up with the above result, declaring mission accomplished.
Here's my best attempt:
It looks like me after taking yet another I.T. call from the office.
After pumpkins, we explored some other dress-up sites, including this one in which you can dress up a zombie or a mummy or a werewolf. It's called, erm, Pimp My Zombie. As soon as the splashpage came up, Rhiannon screamed.
"NO DAD NO! NOT THIS ONE! IT'S TOO SCARY!!!"
I wanted to tell her that what she did to those pumpkins makes me want to be a VERY good dad to here for the rest of our days and to recommend, say working as a publisher instead of as a surgeon.
We left the screen and ended up somehow dressing goth girls in 1920's outfits replete with wings and hobnail boots, floorlength dresses, and tiny hats with flowers on them. This calmed her down and I'm sure is giving her ideas. All kinds of ideas. Which is good actually. As long as she doesn't dye her beautiful, blond hair. Unless of course it's for Halloween.
Rhiannon is paranoid. Her teachers have her running scared this week. I know it's not their intent, but my kid has learned that we are NOT safe. Forget alien invasion. Forget the Reds. What Rhiannon has is good ol' fear of the elements.
When we got home from school yesterday, she started asking questions, as if I had somehow been holding out on her about how the world really works, that it's amoral, and even if you are a five-year-old cutie, Earth couldn't care less.
"Dad?"
"Yes, Rhiannon."
"What if there was an earthquake."
"There are no earthquakes in Arizona." I think...
"Well what do we do if the apartment falls down."
She's really scared about this. She's read the storybook about the kid who jumps on his bed that it falls through the floor and takes the neighbors along for the ride ten stories down.
"The apartment's not going to fall down. We don't live in California."
"How do you know when an earthquake is coming?"
"You really don't until it gets there."
She looks green.
"Rhiannon, we live in Arizona. We're fine."
"What about volcanoes?"
"Volcanoes are in Hawai'i."
"Earthquakes, too?"
"I think so, yes."
Rhiannon actually starts to cry, as if the state of Hawai'i is the perpetual, active reminder of Pompeii, a modern day Herculaneum where good citizens live their lives under the threat of not an atomic cloud, but one of ash. She saw the Pompeii exhibit at the Field Museum. She knows what can happen.
"I don't ever want to live in Hawai'i."
"Rhiannon, we're never going to live there."
"I don't even want to visit!"
"Okay -- I promise we won't go there on vacation any time soon."
This calms her down a bit, and she goes back to her room to play. I'm guessing she's playing Red Cross in there.
Today after school, it's all about fire.
"Stop, drop, and roll, dad."
"Yep. That's what you do if your clothes catch fire."
"Or your hair?"
"Or your hair."
"And your lips."
I am trying really hard not to laugh. "And your lips. Just make sure you are out of the burning building first."
"Okay."
Tonight the terrors of the planet are far from her mind as she falls asleep in an instant. Her concern for her safety, and for the safety of others is genuine. There is love and care. And while it's true that she needs to know about how to comport herself in an emergency, and to not take candy from strangers, and to look both ways before crossing the street, there's a big part of me that wants her biggest concerns to be about what to play with next, and which color to choose from the box as she draws her own world full of flowers, princesses, and the occasional skeleton.
