With a rare morning off today, I wasn’t exactly in a hurry to get out of bed. When Miles finally came into the room, he was eager to take advantage of this, clambering up into the bed and plopping down beside me.
“I’m going to tell you a story, daddy!” he declared, clearly seeing an opportunity to invert his regular bedtime routine. He reached out a hand and started rubbing my shoulder (we usually rub his back as we start our bedtime stories). Then he began.
“Once upon a time…long, long ago…there was…uhhh…hmm…”
Miles regularly makes spontaneous requests for stories that make both Jaclyn and me feel horribly inept as raconteurs. Suffice to say, many of these stories lack what I would consider to be adequate character development, motivations, thematic beats, etc. So it was sort of gratifying to see Miles get a taste of just how hard it is to come up with a passable story on the fly. Eventually, he landed on a subject.
“…a ice cream shop!”
Of course.
“And mommy, and daddy, and Miles go to the ice cream shop.” And then, emphatically for dramatic effect, “THE. END!”
The Perils (& Pride) of Paternity 