Conversations with an Oyster
May. 5th, 2008 08:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
radegundAs usual, I've left this for so long that I have an overwhelming amount of material that I want to post, mainly for my own remembering. You're more than welcome to wade through it, if you're keen...
The big themes: sex, death, love, belief
In our kitchen, early April
Oyster (confidently): Womans have hair that comes forward over their foreheads, like this [*demonstrates a fringe*], but mans have hair that goes back, like this.
Mama: Is that right? Is that how you can tell which is which?
Oyster: Yes, by the hair. You can tell by the hair.
Mama: I see.
Oyster: By the hair. [*pauses*] And the penis.
[On further discussion it emerges that Mama's hair puts her in the "man" category, which seems to undermine the theory somewhat.]
Fiachra's gender is a matter of some debate - Oisín had us all convinced that the new baby would be a girl. This is from February:
Oyster: I thought he was a girl.
Mama: So did I, but we were wrong, we made a mistake. He was a boy.
Oyster: No, I didn't make a mistake - he's a girl with a penis.
Mama: Oh fair enough.
We've had a few discussions about human reproduction, including the information that you "put a tiny bit of the Daddy into the Mama's body" to start making a baby.
Oyster: Is the Daddy broken after that?
[Then, on a later occasion:]
Oyster: How do you get Niall's head into Mama's body?
Mama: Why would you want to?
Oyster: To make a new baby.
[There followed some searching questions about how the sperm cell gets in. I talked about the opening that the baby came out of. I didn't mention penises.]
For a long time, O had a distressing habit of repudiating![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
niallm, saying "go away, I don't like you" and similar. Then one evening, perhaps a month ago:
Oyster: Unlike the other days, I like you now.
Niall: Oh, that's good. I like you too.
Oyster: And I hope that we can make [train] layouts together every day until we die.
Niall: That'd be great.
Oyster: And we should eat and drink healthy things so that we don't die.
Card-carrying misanthrope: in a certain mood, O states a clear preference:
I only like womans. I don't like mans: their voices are in their throats.
This recently morphed into:
I only like me and womans. I don't like any other children or babies or mans.
We have an ongoing discussion about religion, ever since O started noticing church buildings. This, from last summer:
What's a god? Are gods friendly or scary? [To which the only possible answer, obviously, is "yes"...]
I'm a committed agnostic (honestly), and I'm careful how I phrase things, which sometimes frustrates O. Several weeks after a conversation in which I explained that some people believe that gods exist, some people believe that they don't, some people believe that there is one god, some people believe that there are many gods, etc., we had the following - out of the blue, at the lunch table:
Oyster: What sort of person are you?
Mama: Um. I'm your Mama.
Oyster: What sort of Mama are you?
Mama: I'm ... a human female?
Oyster: No, not a human female, that's not what I mean. Are you one who believes or who doesn't believe?
[So I told him about agnosticism.]
Many months later - on our Easter holidays in March, in fact - Killarney Cathedral sparked off the subject again:
Oyster: Do gods exist?
Mama: I don't know.
Oyster: Do you believe they exist?
Mama: I'm an agnostic, so I neither believe that they do exist nor that they don't exist.
Oyster: Well - decide!
Mama: That's the problem, though. Because I'm an agnostic, I've chosen not to decide.
Oyster: *sigh* Are you both agnostics?
Niall: Well, I'm more of a secular humanist...
He wishes it were a simple matter. This is from around October:
Oyster: Tell me everything in the world, Mama.
Mama: Well, I don't know if I can - it would take a very long time.
Oyster: Well, I want it to take a long time.
Mama: It might take longer than we've got.
Oyster: Tell me anyway.
Mama: But there's another problem: I don't know everything in the world.
Oyster: Well, tell me all the things you do know.
Violence
After Fiachra was born, Oisín began incorporating a lot of violent imagery into his games, which had been entirely absent before. I found this quite upsetting, but it was very clear to me that he needed to work through his emotional turmoil in this way. And for the most part, it remained imaginary, so that was good.
Oyster (holding out some completely harmless toy): This is my human opener. It opens up humans and squashes them into blood. Oh, hello Mama, could I squash you into blood? Your hand is blood now, floating in the air.
Oyster (opening and closing his fingers like jaws): These are my infitators. They crumble humans and bones. And these are my dankers. They put them back together.
Oyster: How do you cut womans?
Mama: I don't cut womans.
Oyster: Why?
Mama: I don't think cutting womans is a good idea.
Oyster: No, I mean with swords.
Mama: Even so.
Oyster: *approaches with random toy, held swordlike; pokes* I did cut you!
Language
Words are marvellous.
Interesting ones can be turned into names.
Last summer: A horse called Demolition.
December: A nanny goat doctor called Perception.
The other day: A mule called Temporary.
Before December
Wipescreamers are the devices for clearing rainwater from the windscreen. Carmac is the black stuff that forms the surface of roads (well, it makes sense). And the small rectangular stones you still find on some older city streets? Pobblestones.
January
Oyster: This is a baby floke. A baby floke is a glimber bang. It's a thing for babies, with chairs and stuff.
Oyster: This is my cavivicator, which is an old-fashioned word for "trolley".
Oyster: What's the blouth gimd?
Mama (feeling ratty): There's no such thing as a blouth gimd, you made it up.
Oyster: No, something in real life is it.
Mama: Oh, really?
Oyster: Yeah. Blouth gimd is the American for ... measuring tape!
March, in our Easter holiday cottage
Oyster: I'm a train driver, and this is my engine. [*climbs onto the low windowsill and begins opening the upper window sections - don't worry, he's safe*]
Mama: I see - that's your engine.
Oyster: Yeah. I need to open the windows because I am ... blond.
Mama: Because you're blond?
Oyster: Yes, I am a blond train driver, and I need to open the windows so that I can see better.
April
[His aunt had been telling him a story, but had broken off to talk to my father.]
Oyster: Stop! You're intering up the story!
Games
Paging Doctors Freud and Bettelheim
Oyster: *climbs into Mama's wardrobe and shuts the door* Say, "where's the monster gone?"
Mama: Where's the monster gone? Is it under the bed? No. Is it behind the curtain? No. Is it on the ceiling? No.
Oyster: The door has started to open!
Mama: Oh, my goodness! The door has started to open! What's in the wardrobe?
Oyster: It's the monster!
Mama: Oh, help! It's a monster!
Oyster (with horrid glee): I'm a scary monster! I did eat Oisín!
Mama: You ate Oisín?
Oyster: Yes.
Mama: GIVE ME BACK MY SON, YOU HORRIBLE MONSTER!
Oyster: I won't!
Mama: You will!
Oyster: I won't!
Mama: You will! I'll make you!
Oyster: Here he is ... he's a baby! There was magic in the monster's tummy that did turn Oisín into a baby!
Mama: *cuddles O* Oh, my beautiful baby Oisín, I'm so happy I got you back from that horrible monster who ate you!
Oyster: Waah!
Mama: Are you hungry for Mama milk?
Oyster: Waah!
Mama: Do you need a nappy change?
Oyster: Waah!
Mama: Do you have a pain?
Oyster: ...yeah.
[And so on. This was a CRUCIALLY important game just after Fiachra's birth. We played it several times a day for weeks. It evolved quickly, and each element was vital. We haven't played it in a while now.]
I'm in bed with the two boys one morning.
Oyster: We are three robber tigers who live in the West Pole.
Mama: What do we rob?
Oyster: Steel.
Mama: What do we do with the steel?
Oyster: We put it in cardboard boxes, with glue. Then we mix it in the ... cardboard processor, and make toys.
Mama: Cool. Will we make some toys?
Oyster: Is this January?
Mama: Yes.
Oyster: We only make the toys in January.
Last autumn some time
Oyster: *lies down on the kitchen floor* I'm Europe.
Niall: What are you doing, Europe?
Oyster: Oh, just lying on the ground, thinking about things.
Also last autumn, playing with Niall
Oyster (explaining about the giraffe he's holding): It's a geese-giraffe!
Niall: What's a geese-giraffe?
Oyster: You know, like a sheep-dog.
[The giraffe takes care of the geese. The geese are called Vanilla, Banjo, and Elephant. Later, they are called Beausang, Sanguinello, and Ruth. The geese-giraffe is called Giraffe.]
Oyster: Call the geese.
Niall: *calls the geese*
Oyster: They were blown away by the wind. I'm the wind, calling.
[Ruth doesn't have eyes. How does she see, then? She has pipes, it turns out. (Later, she does have eyes.) Ruth eats clothes, though not Unny's, because he's her owner.]
OK, I have to post this NOW, because if I don't, it'll be another million years before I get around to it.
The big themes: sex, death, love, belief
In our kitchen, early April
Oyster (confidently): Womans have hair that comes forward over their foreheads, like this [*demonstrates a fringe*], but mans have hair that goes back, like this.
Mama: Is that right? Is that how you can tell which is which?
Oyster: Yes, by the hair. You can tell by the hair.
Mama: I see.
Oyster: By the hair. [*pauses*] And the penis.
[On further discussion it emerges that Mama's hair puts her in the "man" category, which seems to undermine the theory somewhat.]
Fiachra's gender is a matter of some debate - Oisín had us all convinced that the new baby would be a girl. This is from February:
Oyster: I thought he was a girl.
Mama: So did I, but we were wrong, we made a mistake. He was a boy.
Oyster: No, I didn't make a mistake - he's a girl with a penis.
Mama: Oh fair enough.
We've had a few discussions about human reproduction, including the information that you "put a tiny bit of the Daddy into the Mama's body" to start making a baby.
Oyster: Is the Daddy broken after that?
[Then, on a later occasion:]
Oyster: How do you get Niall's head into Mama's body?
Mama: Why would you want to?
Oyster: To make a new baby.
[There followed some searching questions about how the sperm cell gets in. I talked about the opening that the baby came out of. I didn't mention penises.]
For a long time, O had a distressing habit of repudiating
niallm, saying "go away, I don't like you" and similar. Then one evening, perhaps a month ago:Oyster: Unlike the other days, I like you now.
Niall: Oh, that's good. I like you too.
Oyster: And I hope that we can make [train] layouts together every day until we die.
Niall: That'd be great.
Oyster: And we should eat and drink healthy things so that we don't die.
Card-carrying misanthrope: in a certain mood, O states a clear preference:
I only like womans. I don't like mans: their voices are in their throats.
This recently morphed into:
I only like me and womans. I don't like any other children or babies or mans.
We have an ongoing discussion about religion, ever since O started noticing church buildings. This, from last summer:
What's a god? Are gods friendly or scary? [To which the only possible answer, obviously, is "yes"...]
I'm a committed agnostic (honestly), and I'm careful how I phrase things, which sometimes frustrates O. Several weeks after a conversation in which I explained that some people believe that gods exist, some people believe that they don't, some people believe that there is one god, some people believe that there are many gods, etc., we had the following - out of the blue, at the lunch table:
Oyster: What sort of person are you?
Mama: Um. I'm your Mama.
Oyster: What sort of Mama are you?
Mama: I'm ... a human female?
Oyster: No, not a human female, that's not what I mean. Are you one who believes or who doesn't believe?
[So I told him about agnosticism.]
Many months later - on our Easter holidays in March, in fact - Killarney Cathedral sparked off the subject again:
Oyster: Do gods exist?
Mama: I don't know.
Oyster: Do you believe they exist?
Mama: I'm an agnostic, so I neither believe that they do exist nor that they don't exist.
Oyster: Well - decide!
Mama: That's the problem, though. Because I'm an agnostic, I've chosen not to decide.
Oyster: *sigh* Are you both agnostics?
Niall: Well, I'm more of a secular humanist...
He wishes it were a simple matter. This is from around October:
Oyster: Tell me everything in the world, Mama.
Mama: Well, I don't know if I can - it would take a very long time.
Oyster: Well, I want it to take a long time.
Mama: It might take longer than we've got.
Oyster: Tell me anyway.
Mama: But there's another problem: I don't know everything in the world.
Oyster: Well, tell me all the things you do know.
Violence
After Fiachra was born, Oisín began incorporating a lot of violent imagery into his games, which had been entirely absent before. I found this quite upsetting, but it was very clear to me that he needed to work through his emotional turmoil in this way. And for the most part, it remained imaginary, so that was good.
Oyster (holding out some completely harmless toy): This is my human opener. It opens up humans and squashes them into blood. Oh, hello Mama, could I squash you into blood? Your hand is blood now, floating in the air.
Oyster (opening and closing his fingers like jaws): These are my infitators. They crumble humans and bones. And these are my dankers. They put them back together.
Oyster: How do you cut womans?
Mama: I don't cut womans.
Oyster: Why?
Mama: I don't think cutting womans is a good idea.
Oyster: No, I mean with swords.
Mama: Even so.
Oyster: *approaches with random toy, held swordlike; pokes* I did cut you!
Language
Words are marvellous.
Interesting ones can be turned into names.
Last summer: A horse called Demolition.
December: A nanny goat doctor called Perception.
The other day: A mule called Temporary.
Before December
Wipescreamers are the devices for clearing rainwater from the windscreen. Carmac is the black stuff that forms the surface of roads (well, it makes sense). And the small rectangular stones you still find on some older city streets? Pobblestones.
January
Oyster: This is a baby floke. A baby floke is a glimber bang. It's a thing for babies, with chairs and stuff.
Oyster: This is my cavivicator, which is an old-fashioned word for "trolley".
Oyster: What's the blouth gimd?
Mama (feeling ratty): There's no such thing as a blouth gimd, you made it up.
Oyster: No, something in real life is it.
Mama: Oh, really?
Oyster: Yeah. Blouth gimd is the American for ... measuring tape!
March, in our Easter holiday cottage
Oyster: I'm a train driver, and this is my engine. [*climbs onto the low windowsill and begins opening the upper window sections - don't worry, he's safe*]
Mama: I see - that's your engine.
Oyster: Yeah. I need to open the windows because I am ... blond.
Mama: Because you're blond?
Oyster: Yes, I am a blond train driver, and I need to open the windows so that I can see better.
April
[His aunt had been telling him a story, but had broken off to talk to my father.]
Oyster: Stop! You're intering up the story!
Games
Paging Doctors Freud and Bettelheim
Oyster: *climbs into Mama's wardrobe and shuts the door* Say, "where's the monster gone?"
Mama: Where's the monster gone? Is it under the bed? No. Is it behind the curtain? No. Is it on the ceiling? No.
Oyster: The door has started to open!
Mama: Oh, my goodness! The door has started to open! What's in the wardrobe?
Oyster: It's the monster!
Mama: Oh, help! It's a monster!
Oyster (with horrid glee): I'm a scary monster! I did eat Oisín!
Mama: You ate Oisín?
Oyster: Yes.
Mama: GIVE ME BACK MY SON, YOU HORRIBLE MONSTER!
Oyster: I won't!
Mama: You will!
Oyster: I won't!
Mama: You will! I'll make you!
Oyster: Here he is ... he's a baby! There was magic in the monster's tummy that did turn Oisín into a baby!
Mama: *cuddles O* Oh, my beautiful baby Oisín, I'm so happy I got you back from that horrible monster who ate you!
Oyster: Waah!
Mama: Are you hungry for Mama milk?
Oyster: Waah!
Mama: Do you need a nappy change?
Oyster: Waah!
Mama: Do you have a pain?
Oyster: ...yeah.
[And so on. This was a CRUCIALLY important game just after Fiachra's birth. We played it several times a day for weeks. It evolved quickly, and each element was vital. We haven't played it in a while now.]
I'm in bed with the two boys one morning.
Oyster: We are three robber tigers who live in the West Pole.
Mama: What do we rob?
Oyster: Steel.
Mama: What do we do with the steel?
Oyster: We put it in cardboard boxes, with glue. Then we mix it in the ... cardboard processor, and make toys.
Mama: Cool. Will we make some toys?
Oyster: Is this January?
Mama: Yes.
Oyster: We only make the toys in January.
Last autumn some time
Oyster: *lies down on the kitchen floor* I'm Europe.
Niall: What are you doing, Europe?
Oyster: Oh, just lying on the ground, thinking about things.
Also last autumn, playing with Niall
Oyster (explaining about the giraffe he's holding): It's a geese-giraffe!
Niall: What's a geese-giraffe?
Oyster: You know, like a sheep-dog.
[The giraffe takes care of the geese. The geese are called Vanilla, Banjo, and Elephant. Later, they are called Beausang, Sanguinello, and Ruth. The geese-giraffe is called Giraffe.]
Oyster: Call the geese.
Niall: *calls the geese*
Oyster: They were blown away by the wind. I'm the wind, calling.
[Ruth doesn't have eyes. How does she see, then? She has pipes, it turns out. (Later, she does have eyes.) Ruth eats clothes, though not Unny's, because he's her owner.]
OK, I have to post this NOW, because if I don't, it'll be another million years before I get around to it.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-05 09:57 pm (UTC)Niall: Well, I'm more of a secular humanist...
Aha! Niall DOES have a belief system! (as per that article).
It's great that you're recording all these dialogues. They're fantastic and so are you all. Imagine when the little 'un speaks in non-Lolcat!
(Thanks for your comments on the synopsis, btw! Definitely something I need to think about.)
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-05 10:29 pm (UTC)I love. Europe. Lying on the floor thinking.
About blond train drivers.
AAAAAH!
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-06 09:18 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-06 12:04 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-06 09:24 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-06 09:31 am (UTC)Oyster: *lies down on the kitchen floor* I'm Europe.
Niall: What are you doing, Europe?
Oyster: Oh, just lying on the ground, thinking about things.
Y'see that's all Europe does, definitely not voting for the Lisbon Treaty now! ;-)
Seriously, all hilarious. I wish there were notes of me at that age somewhere, but I don't think there are.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-06 09:51 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-06 12:20 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-06 01:49 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-06 08:17 pm (UTC)