"It's always messed up with kids."

Note: for those of you new to the blog, Neighborman ("NM") is my neighbor's 4 year old little boy. I don't post his real name.

As I've said before, my neighbor's kid is a T.R.I.P. Yesterday his Mom, a landscape architect, needed to work on a really cool and important up-coming project for downtown Baton Rouge. His Dad is off deep-sea fishing, so I got to spend the afternoon with him. I wish I had a tape recorder, because I'm sure I won't remember all of the funniness.

The day started at 10:30 am. When I arrived, NM wanted to show me his pictures from the "members only" event he attended at the New Orleans Zoo. As we flipped through, he told me everything he remembered about each animal:

• NM: White Flamingos take 2 or 4 years to turn pink. ME: Why is that? NM: Because that's what they told us.


• NM: That is a lizard. ME: That looks like a snake! NM: That is a legless lizard ("Legleth lisword"). He has a different head than a snake.


• He also had pics of a white tiger, a mad lion, elephants eating "walermelon", rhinoceros, "jaglars", "Inabino alligators", owls, ducks, "camilllllion", a swamp monster ("but he's not real"), "Me being a sea lion" (he had his head through one of those billboard things), "Me riding a statue", a tortoise, etc. etc. He knew what every single one was.

From the aquarium, he had pics of him feeding a sting ray "but he had his stingers cut off, and I fed him a fish and I put the fish down there and he just sucked it up", a pic of him "petting a nowse shark" (nurse shark), and a picture of him with two army guys he saw there. He is ob-sessed with all things army-police-camouflage related, and the guys got a kick out of him. Of course, he himself was dressed in head to toe camo. One of the guys gave him a patch from his uniform, and his Mom has now had to sew velcro on every one of his 100 camo shirts so he can always wear the badge.

Then we were off to whole foods, along with about 4,000 other people. It was packed, but we had a good time. He's a very adventurous eater - not picky at all. He wanted to try everything that they had out to sample. I gave him a bite of some bbq tofu and the clerk said "just tell him it's chicken" - no need. He loved it. We got a pizza for lunch and he picked out a cupcake with a red iced crawfish on top for desert.

On our way out of the parking lot of whole foods we saw where they had cut up a huge tree. He said "that's from the hurricane" and proceeded, the whole rest of the way home, to list for me everything a hurricane can knock over "trees, bushes, plants, and houses, and windows, and poles, and lights, and cars, and trucks, and construction men, and bulldozers, and signs, and branches, and christmas stuff, and halloween stuff...towers....metal things... walls... people... wires... school...". It takes at least 15 minutes to get home. This was when I really wished I had a tape recorder. It was cracking me up.

Once home, "Mr. Jason" came to eat pizza with us. We chopped up a little yellow bell pepper that he picked out of his garden to go on the pizza. He ate 3 big pieces, then his cupcake, then needed to show Mr. Jason his zoo photos. Jason was astounded by the amount of knowledge he retained.

Then we were off to the park - a brand new playground next to the dog park near the house. I said "Do you think there will be other children there". He said "Yeah, it's always messed up with kids."

We stayed for almost 2 hours and then it started getting sort of drizzly and windy and tons more kids started showing up with 2 different birthday parties, so I was pretty much done. It was fun though. He played with all the different kids and let them see and play with all his gadgetry (they were all fascinated by his bling). And any time somebody walked a dog by on the way to the park he basically climbed ON TOP of my head. He is TERRIFIED of dogs. At some point during the day - I don't remember when - he said something along the lines of "maybe then Greta wouldn't be so spastic".

So then we went back to the house and I got him to put on the costume from the previous night so I could take a picture, and he took pictures of everything in his house for about an hour. His Mom got home about 4:15. This morning he brought me a picture he had drawn thanking me for taking care of him. So sweet. So funny.