I'm omnipotent

I'm eating up this phase of parenthood. On our trip to Lake Michigan last week, I unveiled to my children that I control the stop lights. We hit about a dozen street lights. Every time we stopped at a red, I'd watch the other light. When it hit yellow, I'd point dramatically at the evil red light and bellow in my best low voice: "I command you to turn green NOW!"

Now every time we're in the car, the boys ask me to "command it Daddy, command it!" My kids also have no idea how uncreative I am. I specifically recall my Grandmother telling me story after story after story about the worms that lived in her yard, and Indian Khyle-wotomus. So the other night, I was putting BigBrother to bed, and we couldn't agree on a book. He wanted to read every word of any long Suess book, I did not.

So I said, why don't I tell you a story? He thought that was a great idea.

Oh shit. What am I going to do? I have no idea where to start. The Titanic, he still digs the Titanic story, let's start with that.

"A long long time ago, far far away in the ship yards if Ireland...."

OK good start. But it has to be new. What else does he like? SHARKS. AWESOME. Should I go all USS Indianapolis (like the story from JAWS)? No, I can't do a Robert Shaw impression to save my life. Ah, I have it.

So I told him a story that Jaws met Titanic going across the Atlantic, and mistook it for a giant shark. So she attacked the Titanic. But she quickly realized that it was a ship, and plugged up the whole until the Carpathia could arrive to save the passengers.

I know what you're thinking. "You should be a professional short story writer." Well, that's just the thing. The kid loved it. We re-enacted it about 8 times the next day using his toy ships.