Stimpy: No I can’t! Yeagh! (presses button)
~ The Ren & Stimpy Show
Another fun ride in Jonah’s amusement park of life is “button.”
“Buh-ih?” he asks, lazily mushing the consonants. (He’s a big-time consonant musher).
What he wants, if you will believe me, is to sit on one of the two chairs in the computer room and turn the printer on and off and on again by pushing the big, candy-like button. This is usually verboten, but once in a while I’ll allow him to press the beloved button five or six times. I think a large part of the charm for Jonah is the racket of inner mechanisms coming to life and then shuddering to sleep, all accompanied by bright, blinking red & green lights. I don’t want him to break the thing, of course, but he asks “button?” so sweetly that he’s hard to resist.
He also loves to sit on my lap at the computer and watch videos. For a long time he begged for “the ocean” and I’d play short videos taken in Cape Cod of him romping in ocean waves. When he was younger he liked Disney, Wiggles, and other kids’ websites; nowadays I like to play him YouTube music videos by They Might Be Giants and Schoolhouse Rock — but ultimately egotism prevails; his all-time favorite computer activity is to watch himself watch himself on video. I know that’s confusing but it’s also the truth. He wants to watch a video in which he watches himself in my dresser mirror while he sings a Guster song. Of course he doesn’t have an ounce of modesty or self-consciousness about this self-absorption, which is funny to see.
Do I have a young Narcissus on my hands? He really dug the pool too. He fell in love with his own reflection in a pool, right? Maybe I’m onto something.
In 20th century pop culture, I just read on Wikipedia, Bob Dylan’s song “License to Kill” refers indirectly to Narcissus: Now he worships at an altar of a stagnant pool /And when he sees his reflection, he’s fulfilled. I’ll have to play that one for Jonah. Maybe he can learn it, watch himself sing it in my dresser mirror as I tape him, then later watch it on video. Then I could videotape him sitting there, watching that on video. And then videotape him again as he watches that on video.
Ow. No. That hurt my brain.
The Never Normal 