mother/son breakfast date

Tennyson and I went for breakfast this morning.

And yes, he ate that entire plate of food and washed it down with two cups of tea.

Ever take a six year old boy for breakfast? It's a lesson in patience.
"Tennyson, please put your sausage back on your plate."
"Tennyson that's enough sugar."
"Tennyson. Your sausage, plate."
"Tennyson, one package of jam is supposed to do more than half a slice of toast."

But seriously, he's an entertaining kid and it was fun to carve out a little one-on-one time.

Do you want to know what wasn't fun? The magic show guy.

Oh, I know what you're thinking: "Magic show guy? Table side, individual magic show performances? Stop being such a grump, that sounds awesome!"

Oh yeah, totally awesome.

I was sitting there, eating breakfast with my kid, when the cook came out of the kitchen with an armload of props and performs a bunch of magic tricks for the kid at the table next to us. Then he glances our way. My inner monologue went something like Oh please please please don't come here. Don't come here. Don't come here. Then the guy says "I'll wait until he's done eating." Meaning Tennyson.

I seriously contemplated dining and dashing. I find nothing more socially awkward than being approached and entertained by strangers, especially when there isn't another adult around for me to force into the spotlight. I was secretly willing Tennyson to eat faster so we could quickly pay and get out.

But no.

The guy came back.

"Hey little boy, wanna see my colouring book? Look at it. Watch the pages as I flip through. See the lines? They're getting bigger so I can colour in them because I'm old and half blind and I wear depends."

The guy flipped through the pages to show that nothing had been coloured. Tennyson poured himself some tea and totally lost interest. Being that his legs are short and can't reach the floor I couldn't very well kick him in the shin to get his attention, so finally I say "Tennyson, pay attention. This old depends-wearing guy wants to show you his old person non-coloured in colouring book. For the love of all this is holy, please don't make this take longer."

Tennyson watched.

"See how nothing is coloured?" Yep. See it.

"I'm not very good at colouring, so I'm not going to use crayons. I'm just gonna take colour from things around me." Ok. He closes the book, pretends to pinch a little colour from Tennyson's shirt, from his own shirt, from whatever colour the table was, from something red, and sprinkles all these colours onto the front cover of the book.

"Alright, now we have to punch the colours in." He punched the book. He told Tennyson to grab some colour from the things around him and toss them on too. At this point I kind of wished I could have somehow conveyed to Tennyson to stop looking like that was the most ridiculous thing he'd ever heard.

"Pinch some blue off your shirt Tennyson," I prompted. He stared at me. Had he been a soap actor he'd have raised an eyebrow. Again, short legs. "Just pretend," I said. I'm not even kidding. Tennyson finds some red, some blue, and adds them to the cover. Then he slams his fist down on top of the book. The guy picks up the book and flips through pages. Ta-Da! They were coloured. At this point he actually had Tennyson's attention.

Then he showed us his magic rope and his magic dice and his magic hanky (which Tennyson pointed out was probably just hidden behind his hand. My kid is awesome. He also stopped the magic show to tell the guy how he debunked his teacher's magic trick at school, something she told me none of the kids have figured out in years. Can't mess with this boy).

His second-last trick was to lay down some cards and have me pick one. Of course I did the trick wrong and had to do it again. I was thrilled that it was all taking longer and it was my fault.

I picked a card, he did his thing. He figured out which card it was.

The very last trick was to have Tennyson take a magic dice, pick a number, put the dice in the magic dice holder, after which he got Tennyson to look into my eyes and convey his number to me, and then the guy put his hand on my head (I'm not even kidding) and read my mind and told Tennyson his number.

It was the number one. He got it right. Yay.

At that point we had done our time and the cook/magician disappeared back into the kitchen.

"Mommy," said Tennyson. "I want to try to guess a number."
"Ok," I said.
He's grinning like a fiend. "Did you pick one?"
"Yep."
He grabbed my head "Is it four?"
"Yes!" I exclaimed, feigning shock and surprise that he guessed it.
Tennyson giggled with unbridled glee. "Let's do it again!"
I sighed. "Ok."
"Did you pick it?" he asked.
"Yep."
He reached for my head. I could see that I was going to be manhandled for a while until I put a stop to it.
"Don't touch my head," I said. "Just look into my eyes and concentrate."
You'll be surprised to find out that he guessed the right number about 826 more times today until I finally started telling him that he was wrong and that the magic that had rubbed off on him must finally have faded.

It was pretty fun to watch him laugh with delight each and every time he got it right. It was even more fun for him to see that Jordan couldn't guess the right numbers at all, verifying that for a little while he indeed had magical abilities.