I can here AJ upstairs sitting on the potty and crooning �My bunny lies over the ocean.� This is right up there with his performance of the chorus of �Alabama, Mississippi,� which he renders as �Shake, shake, shake, shake the baby!� (instead of �shake it baby!�). I�m hoping he doesn�t walk around singing this at school the way he does around the house. I�m afraid we�ll have the DCFS beating down our door.

I recently read an essay by Adam Gopnik (who also wrote �Bumping into Mr. Ravioli,� about which I�ve written previously, although I can't seem to locate the entry) about his relationship with his shrink entitled �Man Goes to See a Doctor.� (It originally appeared in the New Yorker, but is excerpted in Life Stories, an anthology of profiles from the New Yorker, edited by David Remnick.) The basic gist of the story is that Gopnik went to a shrink for a few years, a Freudian who specialized in creative (and sometimes famous) patients, had some unorthodox methods, and said some inappropriate and sometimes downright absurd things that ended up being just right. To give you some idea of what I am talking about, a quote (from p. 491 of the Remnick anthology, if anyone�s interested):

My friends were all in therapy, too, of course � this was New York � and late at night, over a bottle of red wine, they would offer one �insight� or another that struck me as revelatory: �My analyst helped me face the recurring pattern in my life of overprotectiveness that derives from my mother�s hidden alcoholism,� or �Mine helped me see that my reluctance to publish my personal work is part of my reluctance to have a child.� What could I say? �Mine keeps falling asleep, except when we discuss Hannah Arendt�s sex life, about which he knows quite a lot.�

Among the subjects Gopnik discussed with his analyst was the dilemma of whether or not he and his wife should have a child. His analyst responded:

�Yes, you must go ahead and have a child. You will enjoy it. The child will try your patience repeatedly, yet you will find that there are many pleasures in child-rearing.� He cleared his throat. �You will find, for instance, that the child will make many amusing mistakes in language.�

I looked at him, a little dumbfounded � that was the best of it?

�You see,� he went on, �at about the age of three, children begin to talk, and naturally their inexperience leads them to use language in surprising ways. These mistakes can really be extremely amusing. The child�s errors in language also provide the kinds of anecdotes that can be of value to the parents in a social setting.�

This is, of course, outrageous, but Gopnik, like many of us, plunged into child-rearing anyway. His analyst�s response to seeing photos of his newborn son? �Yes�this strongly resembles a child.�

There are times, I have to admit, when I wonder both about the level of our amusement with AJ�s attempts to conquer language, or about my milking of amusing anecdotes in the social setting of diaryland. There were times when he was smaller that we used to lie on the couch and jokingly say, �I don�t feel like watching the Daily Show tonight. Let�s wake up the baby!� The part of me that found that funny found Gopnik�s shrink�s words a bit comforting. I sometimes feel a little guilty for being entertained by AJ. The child�s errors in language really can be extremely amusing. It�s not just that the errors are funny, but that the errors offer a window into the strangeness of the world. AJ has no idea what �shake it, baby� could possibly mean, and thus exchanged the �it� for a �the� in order to make sense of the phrase. Likewise �bunny� for �Bonny� a word I don�t believe he�s ever encountered, even as a first name. He drinks �root beard� because he knows that beer is something that children don�t drink. And his favorite board game is �chest,� because the chessmen are kept in a small chest.

AJ, however, is desperate to be taken seriously. He does not wish to make such errors and gets extremely upset when we point them out and laugh at them, as I�m certain I myself would were I in his situation. It doesn�t matter to him that he�s three and that such errors are to be expected. He is not trying to fit into the world of three. He is trying to fit into the world of all.

It is for AJ�s sake that I feel guilty about being entertained by him. Which is probably why I tend to coalesce when he gets into one of his directorial modes and begins scripting scenes for us to play over and over. Often in the course of normal playing together, he will decide that he needs to tell me what to do with the toys, where to sit and what to say. �Mommy, when I do something, don�t say anything.� Or, �When I say something, don�t laugh,� have become commonplace portions of the scripts. It would seem that in my enjoyment of my time with AJ I forget what it�s like to be the entertainer. Such scripts serve to remind me that I am the one who is supposed to be entertaining him (or so he thinks, anyway).

Still, it is comforting to hear that even if we fail as parents, the fodder for cocktail-party conversations may have made the venture worth it. I�m sure the invitations are already in the mail from hosts and hostesses across the land who are dying to hear another parent tell another cute story about her precious baby. Time to polish my tiara.

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