Les Bonnes Choses

To begin, Jude gets a Flintstone multivitamin most mornings. When I was a kid, The Flintstones were still on the air (in syndication, at least), and the chewable multivitamin was a crunchy tablet in the shape of characters from the program. They still make the multivitamin, though it is now a gummy-like gelatin shape, and I'd be surprised if kids know what the heck The Flintstones are because I haven't seen any trace of the program in my channel listings for some while now. I imagine the factory where the vitamins are made might be in some kind of ghost town, like from a sci-fi movie: the townspeople evacuated 15 years ago, and the automated factory keeps spitting out the vitamins 24-7, tracking ingredient inventories with FoxPro and sending and receiving shipments through some local company who doesn't ask questions because their account is paid up through 2112.

I digressed.

I mention the gummy multivitamin because he gets one each day, and you need to know that to make sense of what I am about to relate.

A couple of weeks ago, Rebecca returned from a shopping outing with a tree skirt. I have no idea why she bought it, other than it was priced to go. I have told her many times that this is not sufficient reason to make a purchase; a bowl of excrement can be "priced to go," but that doesn't make it a good buy. Nonetheless, we have a new tree skirt. When Jude found this tree skirt, he said it looked like what the guy wears at the front of the church. I have already made an account of some of Jude's ideas about church, so it seems that this domain provides lots of fodder for his imagination. Yesterday, Rebecca returned from Ikea with a pile of round rubber coasters. Jude called them "Jellies," which made absolutely no sense at first. But as he continued to talk, we realized he was referring to the communion wafers which, like gummy multivitamins, you are only allowed one of at a time.

I don't know whether this was a result of Rebecca's encouragement, or if Jude has taken it upon himself to blaspheme, but I present without further ado, why my oldest son will be going to hell.

Yes, that is a tree skirt he's wearing. It doesn't look that bad, actually, so maybe the church has some more money-saving options.