Remember this?
You may think that's an old Monty Python sketch, but it's really secret YouTube footage of my family. I bet you didn't know that I looked so much like Michael Palin. Also, Connery is very tall on film. I heard the camera adds four feet and about 30 years.
Connery will argue about anything, even things that have no bearing whatsoever on logic. Our latest argument involves a great work of literature by Theodor Geisel, Ph.D. In this seminal volume, Geisel presents the lesson that the unknown need not be feared, using the metaphor of a pair of verdant trousers that move on their own, or, as the good doctor terms them, "pale green pants with nobody inside them." He repeatedly uses the language of "empty pants", thus emphasizing their utter lack of occupation. And yet they move--bicycling, boating, walking about.
This is where Geisel and my whimsy-impaired son part ways. If the pants can move, there must be somebody inside them--even if the other character in the story does not yet realize it. Reading this story to him is like visiting the argument clinic:
Me: "And then they moved, those empty pants, they kind of--"
Connery: Except they weren't really empty. There was someone there.
Me: No, they were empty. It says so right there.
Connery: But they can't be empty, because they're jumping.
And so it goes. He will argue spiritedly, heatedly, sometimes even angrily about things that make no sense at all. This morning he told me that in the next story about the pale green pants we would find out who was actually inside. How do I argue with that, short of, "This isn't some Spiderman movie here! There's no sequel! Dr. Seuss is dead and he's not writing anything else. Not ever!" Which, you know, might not be the best way to end breakfast.
Short trip to the abuse room, isn't it?