Milt and His Freakin' Trip

The blight of the early reader is the dearth of good engaging stories to read. As my son masters an ever-expanding vocabulary of words that he can read, he brings home stories to review these words. Working with a limited vocabulary as they do, the stories are usually pretty dull. And, in comparison to the chapter books that I read him, the stories are just painful.

But we perservere and at bedtime each evening J.T. reads a little from his practice stories before I read from our chapter book (right now, that's a book in the The Indian in the Cupboard series, a set of an amazing stories by Lynne Banks Reid). A few nights back, as J.T. read the story of Milt who is taking a trip with a bag packed full of milk and ham for his snack, J.T had some concerns. First off, he felt that the ham and milk would go bad in the absence of a cooler. I agreed but allowed that creative license must be given. But as Milt droned on and on about the trip he wants to take, J.T. grew exasperated. "I know he wants to take a trip," my boy announced, "BUT I JUST DON'T CARE."

And though it likely means I am a bad parent, I laughed out loud because I had been feeling exactly the same way.