• You Still Suck*

  Filed under A Dude's Guide to Kids
  Oct 22

  While our oldest little dude gave up the binky pretty much cold turkey, our middle little dude stretched our patience to the breaking point and beyond. Sort of a template for how he’d be working with me and his mom for the rest of his life. Oh, yes. The good old days.

  Our middle little dude didn’t get a cold that would prevent him from sucking on a binky. No, he was blessedly cold free for most of his young life. Which meant, of course, that he would keep sucking on his binky for as long as humanly, or little dudely, as possible. We tried to coax him out of the binky, but it was no go. If we removed the plastic sucky, he’d wake up screaming and looking for his binky. Eventually, we decided it wasn’t worth the effort.

  That lasted until our middle little dude was about two years old. By then, we couldn’t stand going out in public with him, as long as his mouth was stuffed full of plastic. It just looked wrong to us that this (again, to us) big little dude was walking around on his own and still sucking on a binky. I’d do rock, paper, scissors with my wife, known to me as She Who Wins No Matter What, and dread taking our middle little dude out in public. My oldest little dude and his mom would smirk at us from the other side of the mall. Yeah, that was fun.

  Eventually we decided to appeal to our middle little dude’s good side. That is, we wanted his greediness to work for us. We told him that certain toy stores would take binkies instead of money. Little dudes could go into toy stories, give the clerks their binky and take home the toy they loved the most. Our middle little dude was ecstatic. We immediatly went to the toy story and he ran to the tube o’ animals, a small tube filled with little, plastic animals of the rain forest. He proudly walked up to the counter clerk, whom we’d talked to beforehand, and handed over his binky. The clerk rang him up and gave him the tube o’ animals. The little dude walked out of there, levitating a foot off the ground.

  That lasted all the way up until nap time. He laid down, clutching his new tube o’ animals and demanded his binky. We tried to explain how he’d used his binky to buy the animals, but he wouldn’t listen. Admittedly we’d kept an extra binky at the house, just in case, but we stayed strong. (Well, actually, I stayed strong while his mom wavered enough that I had to hide the extra binky. Yes, I sometimes call her an invertabrate.) It took about a week, but the middle little dude finally it wasn’t worth the effort of yelling to get something he wasn’t all that certain about anymore.

  A few months later I stumbled over the extra binky. I thought, is it really all that great? Yes, I put it in my mouth and started sucking. It was actually all that great. For about two seconds. Until I started tasting all the dust and gunk that adheres to a sticky piece of plastic that’s sat on top of the fridge for a couple of months. Really, not that good an experience.

  – Richard

  * Nope. No vampire/Christopher Moore joke today. Just checking to see if you still look at the bottom when I use an asterick.

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  Tags: A Dude's Guide to Kids, Amp, Animals, Animals Of The Rain Forest, art, Asterick, Binkies, Binky, Breaking Point, buy, Christopher Moore, Clerks, Cold Turkey, Dread, dude, Dude's, Extra, Fridge, Goo, Greediness, Heck, house, Joke, little dudes, love, mom, money, Patience, Plastic Animals, public, Rock Paper Scissors, Stuff, Suck, Sucking, Toy Stores, Toy Stories, Toy Story, Vampire, wife, young
  
  Tagged as: Amp, Animals, Animals Of The Rain Forest, art, Asterick, Binkies, Binky, Breaking Point, buy, Christopher Moore, Clerks, Cold Turkey, Dread, dude, Dude's, Extra, Fridge, Goo, Greediness, Heck, house, Joke, little dudes, love, mom, money, Patience, Plastic Animals, public, Rock Paper Scissors, Stuff, Suck, Sucking, Toy Stores, Toy Stories, Toy Story, Vampire, wife, young
  
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