The Littlest Bachelor

Ben was away this week.  His absence somehow corresponded with the week a month the babysitter takes off and (how? how?) the aide’s car breaking down.  No Ben, no babysitter, no aide.  I relaxed my standards a bit.

Usually, six o’clock finds us sitting down to dinner at a candlelit table, giving our high points and low points (often pitching our voices above Mihiretu’s but no matter).  This last week it found us (minus Ben) draped on the couch, Mihiretu with earphones and Yu-Gi-Oh on the iPad, the girls and I dug deep into trashy television.

Sunday night was the Golden Globes.  Great fun for all, plus a teaching moment when Jodie Foster came out (me: “Girls, do you know what just happened?”  Mae:  a firm “Yes” and then “What?” me: long explanation of Jodie Foster’s path, the meaning of an open secret, etc.)

Tuesday night we watched the tivoed “The Bachelor”.  Please hold your calls and letters – I know, terrible, terrible thing for young girls to watch.  Ridiculously sexist, absurdly unrealistic view of love and marriage, basically a female orgy with one very lucky guy in the middle of it.  The girls have received a long mom lecture on my opinions on relationships, on romantic ideals versus true everyday love, on how this TV show is total horseshit but also so very fun to watch.

So we were watching, the girls and I, chomping our popcorn, sipping our wine (okay, that was me), discussing how very articulate was the one-armed girl in addressing her disability, when Mihiretu, settled in the crook of my arm, peeled off his headphones and pushed the iPad aside.  This, usually, would be when the happy scene crumbled.  Mihiretu, tired at the end of the day, at loose ends while the girls and I watch something on TV in which he has no interest.

But this boy, who takes his television straight-up animated, watched raptly, silently, for a good five minutes before asking, “That girl gonna get a wose, Mama?”  I said that, no, it looked like that girl was not going to get a rose, that girl was headed home, it seemed.  “Good,” he said with a quick nod of his head, “I no like her.”  I had to say, I agreed.

He finished out the show with us.  It was utterly delightful.  Later, when I told Ben, he said, of course, it’s about romance with lots of pretty ladies, right up his alley.  Plus, all that cleavage.  Really, what’s not to love?