A Great Evening with Dr. Seuss

Tonight I was reading Dr. Seuss to C. We have quite a few of his books and while some are definitely better than the others I can't say I have a favorite... there are just too many that are great.

There are classics like the "Cat in the Hat", and there's "The Lorax", and one that I really love to read, "I Had Trouble in Getting to Solla Sollew" but tonight we read "The Sneeches" which we've probably read fifty times or more. C is five years old, about to be six in another month or so and he can read it himself without much effort, but I think he prefers to be read to and naturally that caters to my desire to read to him... you know, be the daddy.

That and there's just something almost magical to me about reading a Dr. Seuss book. The rhymes and lyricism with which the stories were penned bring my mouth to something just shy of salivation while reading them aloud. It's like performing an acrobatic maneuver. It requires some skill, timing, mental concentration and perhaps even a little daring to fully execute a sentence appropriately. It's just plain fun to read.

But back to the Sneeches. If you don't know the story, then you should probably grab a copy just for fun. At one point C asked a question about why the Sneeches kept going into the machine, and I tried answer him by telling him that they thought what they looked like on the outside was more important than what they really were like on the inside, and that it's really much more important what you are like on the inside... you know, a typical daddy explanation.

That's the kind of moment in fatherhood where there's opportunity to doubt yourself. Not only do you never really know if what you've said was actually the right way to explain something, there's also the question of what you've said is actually correct... and then there's the chance that your kiddo isn't old enough to be able to fully understand it anyway.

So we finished up "The Sneeches" and read "The Zax", "Too Many Daves" and "What Was I Scared Of?" and then went through the rest of our bedtime ritual; teeth brushing, song singing, etc. which we've done for years now. And then, just as I tucked him into bed, he was looking at me in a kind of wide-eyed and puzzled state and I asked, "C do you want another book to read?" and he said no. And as he stared at me I wondered what he was thinking so I asked again, "do you need something buddy" and he responded with this :

"Dad, I know what Silvester McMonkey McBean did. He tricked the Sneeches. He tricked them into giving him all their money so he would get rich." And with that, we had a short chat about something called "vanity" and how McBean took advantage of it, then I tucked him in, wished him sweet dreams, and all of my doubts simply evaporated.

I have a really great kiddo.