I tried ... I’m sorry. In general, I try to weave stories about my son into something that reflects universal themes shared by our collective “Dad” consciousness. But less than a month in, I’ve succumbed. At least I’ve chosen just a few “best of” selections culled from 3 years of journals, random .txt files scattered on my desktop and note-to-self voice clips saved on multiple generations of peripheral devices.

Tell it like it is (age 2)
“Dada wawa” -- Jack Daniel’s, Johnny Walker and other similarly bottled amber beverages

If it works ... (age 2 to present)
“Knock knock, dada. Knooooock knoooooock dada!” –- I awoke to this phrase blaring out of the baby monitor every morning from the moment he started to grasp the concept of words as tools. Translation: "I’m up. Come get me NOW and I don’t have a snooze button, so if you want to be good to mom, get over here before I increase my frequency and volume." To this day, out of habit more than anything, he still does this when he wakes up, even though he has every ability to get out of bed, go to the bathroom, power up the computer, get a snack, etc. Of course, he’s too cool to use baby words. Now it’s “knock, knock, Dad.”

Plan B (age 3)
“Use your words” is a great conflict resolution mechanism -- if you possess a large vocabulary. We really can’t fault Marcus for this one. When it happened, this story quickly made its rounds through the family and friends grapevine. When it reached Jeff Day, a family friend and aspiring cartoonist, it inspired this rendition of what went down:

Why bother? (age 5)
One morning, I was explaining to Marcus the whole concept of the suffix, Jr. He didn’t seem convinced of its necessity. Perhaps an example would help. I told him that if we both were named Jim, it would be harder for people to ask for either of us if they called our house. By specifying Jim Jr., we’d know which Jim they meant. He wasn’t buying it.

“Dad, by the time I’m old enough to get phone calls you’ll be dead anyway.”
That’s it! I’m gonna lay off the dada wawa just to prove the little bugger wrong.

I think I just changed my mind about that Corvette (age 5)
We recently pulled up next to a flashy PT Cruiser, complete with chrome rims and a custom flame paint job. Marcus seemed impressed at this pimp ride, but quickly changed his mind.

“He doesn’t deserve it,” he flatly concluded.
“Huh??”
“He’s too old.”

Early onset sarcasm (age 5)
We were driving behind a guy taking his sweet time in the passing lane, and I incidentally pointed out his Star Wars bumper sticker to Marcus.

“Hey, Fury, he has a sticker that says Join the Dark Side.”
“Well it should say Join the Slow Side.”