Tell It Again, Mom

If you were to spend any time in my house these days, you would likely hear me tell, over and over and upon request, a very boring story about Dorothy being noisy in the night.  For some reason, this very quotidian story fascinates Owen, and I can’t quite figure out why.  In a nutshell, Dorothy jumps off my bed, goes and drinks water forever and loudly, and then comes back to the bed, upon which I have to get up and help her back on.  This is a nightly occurrence in general, but one night she jumped off, drank, and then needed help getting back on three times, and so after the third time I kicked her out of the bedroom.  But as the “story,” such as it were, has been told, Owen has added on his own coda, in which he, Owen, came in with a sign on which he had written “BE QUIET, DOROTHY!” and taped it to my door.  So that when Dorothy returned to attempt to get back on the bed, as she did multiple times throughout the rest of the night, she was able, according to Owen, to read the sign and understand why she was denied entry.

Is it that he is the hero of the story that makes it appeal to Owen?  Or that he was able to explain something to Dorothy? Or that it is a joint story-telling effort with Owen picking up the tale at the time that Dorothy is heading glumly downstairs by herself?  I’m really not sure.  He likes to hear other stories about the pets, his favorites being When Plum Ate My Vitamin C, When Norman (my childhood dog) Played With a Grape Instead of Eating It, and When Posy Faceplanted Into A Blue Cupcake And Then Pretended She Hadn’t.  These are all stories he requests multiple times per week.

The other day Owen and I were eating and I bit my tongue and said ouch, and then had to explain to Owen what happened.  The next morning Owen said, “tell me the story of when your tooth got too excited and bit your mouth.”  Okay, although I think he just told the story himself better than I could have done!