Obama Wears Jean Shorts?

Back in January, Zachary got moved up to the next class at school. It was kind of a rough transition, because he was the only one who moved up at the time (when he had moved up the time before back in August of last year, about 7 or 8 other kids moved up with him). So it was hard on him because all of his friends were still in the old class. He quickly made new friends though, and it wasn’t long before he had completely adapted to the new class. We would ask him who his friends were, so we could get a sense for who he was playing with. He would tell us that Jonah is his friend, or Bray-Bray (Brayden) is his friend. One day he told us “But Gavin is not my friend”. When I asked him why not, he replied (very matter-of-factly) “Because he’s a Gator.” It was very hard not to laugh. I mean, it’s nice to know that all of our Georgia Bulldog training is paying off! However, we have no idea if Gavin actually is a Gator or not (I don’t think we’ve ever seen him wearing Florida stuff). Furthermore, I’m not even sure Zachary knows what that means. He does know what it means to wear jean shorts though – and he knows that it is NOT a good thing. A couple of people told us we should be ashamed of ourselves, but we have been quick to clarify that we have never told Zachary that he cannot be friends with the enemy (we didn’t quite put it that way, but you know what we mean). So back to Gavin…the fact that Zachary didn’t seem to want to be friends with Gavin was actually OK with me (regardless of the possible Gator thing) – he always seemed like kind of a troublemaker. I don’t know if that’s just Gavin or if it has anything to do with the fact that he’s got an older brother (who is about 6 maybe) who he picks up stuff from that a typical 3-year-old wouldn’t normally know. For example, last night Zachary & I sat down for dinner (Josh had a work dinner to attend). Zachary wanted to say the blessing, so he folded his hands, and was about to start, when he put his arms up (like a bodybuilder flexing his muscles) and said something about tickets to the gun show. When I told Josh about this after he got home, he cracked up for about 5 minutes, and then said we have to watch Anchorman this weekend. I didn’t find it quite as funny (although I do love Anchorman). I mean, Zachary doesn’t even know what a gun show is (yet he kept insisting that we need tickets for it). I asked him where he heard about that – guess who??? GAVIN! Gavin now has Zachary spouting crap out that he doesn’t even know what he’s talking about. I have a feeling that a lot of what Gavin says has to do with having an older brother. Our neighbors a couple of doors down have 2 boys (7 and almost 4) and she has told us that the younger one plays much older than his age because he wants to be into the same things that the older one is into. So now I’m afraid that in a few years Liam will be Gavin.

A few months ago we saw the kids who live in the house behind ours out in their backyard riding around on their little motorized cars. Zachary asked who that was, and we told him it was the little boy who lives there but we didn’t know what his name is. Zachary said “I think it’s Barack Obama”. Funny, but again – where did he come up with that? Because we’re certainly not talking about it over dinner. Mainly because to me, discussing politics is probably more boring than hearing someone recite the phone book or watching grass grow during a drought. The only thing we can think of is Josh likes to listen to talk radio in the mornings, and so any time he does the drop-off in the morning, Zachary might hear something about politics. Then one day Zachary heard something about Obama either on TV or on the radio and he said “Miss Katie says we do NOT say Obama at school”. We thought maybe either she was a McCain fan – or that Zachary was just making crap up again. Turns out, Obama apparently IS taboo at school. We got a note yesterday from his teacher saying that she didn’t know if he’d been talking about “Obhama” at home (she’s not the greatest speller in the world…) but there is a child in the class who is “really going for Obhama” and I guess Zachary was saying it too. She mentioned that they’ve had a talk about how we don’t talk about that at school – only at home. OK, I can get on board with that, but seriously – a child in the class who is “really going for Obama”??? They are three! They don’t know who or what Obama is! I even asked Zachary last night if he knew what Obama is and he had no idea – he thought it had something to do with being bad. So now I think that because the teacher has made SUCH a big deal out of not saying it at school, that it’s more of an issue than if she hadn’t said anything at all. Zachary was running around the whole time before dinner last night repeating “Obama” over and over, only because technically it’s allowed at home but not at school. This Obama thing at school was apparently isolated to just Zachary & one other kid who started it (Zachary was apparently only saying it after the other kid though). I’ll give you three guesses as to my hunch on who the other kid was…