What Thompsons Do

On Magoo’s Mind – The Crushing Weight of Monarchical Responsibility

May 14, 2013 by Kathryn

We’ve been going to Costco for the past 11 years lately and each time we go, we have to get our receipt “checked” by the receipt checking person at the exit. They don’t really check. But they are good with a marker. They look searchingly, even longingly into your eyes, swipe the marker down the receipt, and hand it back to you. Sometimes they mumble, “Have a good day.” Usually they seem to mean it.

I love Costco. They have lunch for $1.50 and ice cream bars as big as your head, if you’re into that sort of thing and… A NEW CAR!

Now if you are under the age of, say, me, and you hand them a receipt, it is unwritten or perhaps written Costco policy that the employee must draw a picture on the back of the receipt, unless you’re that guy in the blue polo shirt who hates fun and the laughter of babies. All other Costco employees will draw a smiley face if Wanda or Laylee or Magoo hands them the receipt.

Over the last 10 years, I’ve seen these drawings escalate to the point that I think you need to have previous experience as a caricature or police sketch artist in order to do the receipt checking at Costco. Lately, they always draw pictures of my actual kids, sometimes with cat ears or a pig nose or holding a balloon, but the pictures have gotten very elaborate.

Today, I was with Wanda and Magoo and we got this:

It is Wanda as a princess, obviously, and Magoo as a prince.

Wanda: Look Magoo! I’m a princess and you’re a prince. It’s so NICE!

Me: Thank you for checking to make sure I got both cartons of free-range brown-because-brown-eggs-make-me-better-than-you eggs listed on my receipt, except, wait, you didn’t look at the front part of the receipt because you were creating the greatest Costco receipt sketch of all time.

Wanda: You’re like a PRINCE!

Magoo (shaking his head and rolling his eyes with an exhausted sigh): If they asked me to be a real prince, I would never do it, and not just because it’s embarrassing. You have to make so many choices about so many things. No way.

So, today, in the parking lot of our fair Costco, Magoo pre-abdicated the throne. I’m not sure what to do about this. He is my only son. But the crushing weight of monarchical responsibility has obviously weighed heavily upon his mind for some time now. He had his answer ready without a moment’s pause. It will not be he who ascends to the Thompson throne. We must seek another.

Wherein One of My Wildest Parenting Fantasies is Fulfilled on Mothers’ Day Eve Courtesy of Martin Scorsese

May 11, 2013 by Kathryn

Some Mothers’ Day gifts are planned. A hand squished in cement and bejeweled with fish tank marbles. A scarf. The hammock you texted a picture of to your husband and he asked if it was lame if you picked it up while you were at Costco. (You said “no” because you really wanted the hammock and you’d really rather spend the night canoodling with your husband rather than sending him back into town to buy the item that you were standing right next to earlier that day.)

But some gifts come unexpectedly.

Tonight, we finally watched the movie Hugo and it lead to one of my wildest parenting fantasies coming to fruition.

I studied film in school. I initially had hopes of becoming a screenwriter or director, possibly even a cinematographer, but when I took my first documentary film class, I was hooked. I could imagine nothing more wonderful than making films about the beauty of real life, about actual human experience. My Hollywood dreams melted away and I settled into a burning passion for all things non-fiction, if there is such a thing in filmmaking.

This doesn’t mean I wasn’t more than happy to act as script supervisor for the occasional student vampire flick, or fumble my way through being key grip on an all-female crew woman power film, the plot of which I’ve long forgotten. I loved movies in all forms, especially fascinated by documentary and early film.

After graduation, I took a job at a public library with a gigantic, I mean truly remarkable, film and music collection. I was in heaven, every day working amongst the greatest films ever made, and Tommy Boy. I got to help develop programs to teach people about film history or a certain unknown-to-the-public-but-staggeringly-brilliant foreign film director.

I once led a man on a several month journey of film discovery, culminating in handing him what I believe to be one of the greatest films ever produced, sure to lead you to a place of self-discovery and religious transformation. When he returned the film, he brought it to me personally, with a thank you note. One day I’ll show that film to my kids, but they’ll need to work up to it. And Scooby-Doo ain’t gonna get them there.

I left the job after Laylee was born and have let the film world slowly drift away. There is more of Disney than Errol Morris or Zhang Yimou in my collection now. And for the past 7 years, struggling off and on with crippling anxiety and panic disorder, my film searches now have more to do with content than craft. Too many images I’ve seen in the past have become the raw materials for my waking postpartum nightmares.

But, I’ve always wanted to share my love of filmmaking with my kids. I keep a copy of Landmarks of Early Film, a collection of the first moving pictures ever captured and I think, One day my kids will appreciate these. One day I’ll show them Lumière brothers’ actualities and tell them about how and why they were made and they’ll be as captivated as my audiences of three at my public library programs. One day, they will beg to see A Trip to the Moon or anything starring Harold Lloyd.

I’ve brought the DVD out a couple of times and it’s been like a kale and turnips fiesta. You can make us eat it but you can’t make us like it.

Then tonight we watched Hugo, a quiet film about an orphan and a robot and a whole lot of film history, and when it was over, Laylee and Magoo were begging me to watch A Trip to the Moon and the Lumière actualities and listening with rapt attention as I spouted my rusty film history knowledge. They were AMAZED that I knew this stuff! They were thrilled that I owned these movies. They interrupted our family scripture study three times to explain new ways we could do our own special effects with Méliès-style editing.

It was an almost out of body experience for me, something akin to Wanda suddenly asking Dan to tell her all about how to write code… and soaking it up like he was the genius that he is… and then trying to write her own code all the way through family scripture time.

It was like Dan had paid them to do this for me, so I could cross one huge unimaginable thing off my parenting bucket list… and then they had suddenly transformed into the world’s greatest thespians and pulled it off. Now, tomorrow for actual Mothers’ Day, they can clog the toilet because they used it ten times without flushing, tell me to kiss off with their piercing eye daggers, and fight about a lollipop… because… MINE. You know? The usual.

I guess I want to thank Martin Scorsese for making a film to help me bridge the gap with my kids, to make them hungry to learn about one of my long lost passions, to transform the turnips into chocolate. I want to thank him for one of the best Mothers’ Day gifts ever.

A Mysterious Birthday Party

February 27, 2013 by Kathryn

Laylee is TEN! Her oldness and lack of being young astound me. You feel me?

Laylee’s a book nut, so her birthday parties often revolve around favorite literary masterpieces. A couple of years ago we did a Princess Academy theme and this year it was The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart. If you haven’t read the series, I highly recommend the books. They’re fun, sweet, smart and exciting. Dan actually likes them better than the Harry Potter series.

Book parties work well for me because they’re fun, inexpensive, close to home, and they get all of Laylee’s friends reading something together.

This series is about a secret society of extraordinarily gifted children, recruited by Mr. Nicholas Benedict to save the world. They are fighting against an evil man named Ledroptha Curtain who has built a “Whisperer” machine that controls the minds of all the people it broadcasts to. Much of the work the children do involves solving riddles and puzzles, and escaping the evil 10-men, a group of suit-wearing assassins.

So for our party, I recruited Laylee’s friends to help us build an anti-whisperer (made of spray-painted garbage found in my recycling bin and garage) to stop his evil plot.

The invitation read:

Laylee is turning 10 and we’re celebrating with an adventure.

Mr. Nicholas Benedict has an important mission that only these girls can complete. I’m afraid to say that the fate of the entire world rests on their shoulders.

They must use their greatest skills, cunning and teamwork to stop the mysterious Mr. Curtain who plans to take over first Duvall and then the world. Mwahaha!

And… they’ll only have 2 hours to do it. We will be going on the adventure rain, snow, or shine so dress appropriately. It is likely the clues will lead us all over town. We will come back to the library at the end for cake, if we make it out alive.

(Please consider reading the first book in the Mysterious Benedict Society series by Trenton Lee Stewart prior to the event, although this is not required.)

-Sincerely,

Number 2

The day of the party, I stood outside of the library to greet the girls, dressed as Number 2 in my mustard yellow clothes and red wig, chomping on a carrot. (Number 2 always nibbles on something because she never sleeps and therefore needs more energy to keep her going.)

I checked them in on my clipboard and sent them to our base in the library meeting room, where Dan, dressed as Mr. Benedict, greeted them and gave them a briefing on the seriousness of the situation and what would be required of them.

Periodically, he would fall asleep, as the narcoleptic Mr. Benedict is prone to do, and I would catch him before he hit the ground. Amazing acting skills on that Dan Thompson. He told the girls to start their quest by speaking to the person who gives directions to dead trees.

The Librarian! She gave the girls their first clue:

The numbers represented letters and number of words in each line represented a number. So we ended up with a call number that took us to a book about firefighters. The firefighter book had the following clue.

So we headed to the fire station, where we found a piece to our machine and another clue.

So, the burned edges work with the fire station clue because it’s supposed to be a relic taken from a burning building. But once I started burning edges, I was physically incapable of stopping so I burned all of them. It gives them a certain mystery and I really really like lighting things on fire.

On the way back to the base to decipher the clue, I realized that the party was going much too quickly so I told the girls I had seen a 10-man near the library and we would need to take the long way around, several blocks out of our way to avoid being seen and possibly captured. We marched all over town before ending up back at the library.

They solved this clue by figuring out the missing words and then using the first letter of each word to form a new word, “GRANGE”.

“THE GRANGE!” they all yelled. “I KNOW THAT PLACE!”

So we headed to the Grange, all the girls thrilled that they were figuring things out on their own.

The final clue led us (maybe too obviously) to the giant clock located out front of City Hall.

Now, at this point, the girls thought I had made up everything about how the 10-men were here in Duvall, following us around, trying to thwart us, but as we headed out the library doors, they saw a suspicious man in a dark suit and glasses standing across the street, right in front of the clock… with a briefcase… and watches on both wrists.

“It’s a 10-MAN!” they squealed and dropped to the floor inside the library.

My friend Mike, an actor who I’d asked to help with the party, was right on time. I told the girls I’d distract him so they could go retrieve the clue. They watched with bated breath as I crossed the street, bumped into Mike and ran off down Main Street, with him in hot pursuit. When we were out of site down an alley, the girls hurried across the street and found the clue tucked under some shrubbery near the clock.

We didn’t get a picture of Mike chasing me, or even one of the 10-man, but Dan’s cousin Jeanie who was visiting for the weekend depicted it like this:

The final piece of the machine was the back end of a flashlight. When screwed on, the machine lit up and then we could follow the final clue and celebrate.

Overall, I think it was a success. One girl mentioned to me that it was pretty embarrassing to be walking around town with me in that wig so I told her to walk further ahead if it made her more comfortable but, for the most part, they completely played along.

The party favors were little red buckets, meant to be similar to the red bucket from the book, carried around by main character Kate, full of supplies that can be used to get you out of any sticky situation. I gave them each a flashlight, a cool pencil, some licorice “rope,” an eraser, and a kaleidoscope, because Kate carries a kaleidoscope that secretly doubles as a spy glass.

If I had it to do over again, I would have made more clues and made them harder to decipher. I would also have used Morse code. But I can’t really complain. Laylee’s happy with how it turned out, and the world has been saved.

You’re welcome.

Just Love Em, Dad Gum It

January 20, 2013 by Kathryn

The weirdest thing happened at dinner tonight. My little angel babies of light were *gasp-snork* fighting with one another. And it wasn’t a good fight or a noble fight. They were not fighting to protect the honor of a fallen comrade or to maintain their basic human freedoms.

They were fighting about whether or not Magoo had seen me and Dan kiss. He maintains to this day that he NEVER sees us kiss. We’ll kiss in one room and he’ll yell from the next room, “I didn’t see that!” It’s sort of a joke in our family. Well today Dan and I were on the make-out war path. He’d kiss me mid-sentence, whenever he thought Magoo could not possibly miss seeing it.

Magoo would calmly close his eyes and say, “Didn’t see that.”

Well, by golly, Laylee was pretty sure he had seen one of them and she would not stand for the lies, those dangnable, dangnable lies. If a person has seen two other people snog at the dinner table, he’d better darn well man up about it.

She would not let it go.

“I didn’t SEE IT!” he protested.

“Yes you did,” she persnicked.

“Did not.”

They would not stop. Dan told them to stop. Then he commanded them to stop. But they just kept nitting and picking at each other. Tears were shed and the war waged on.

Dan encouraged them to use kind words. “We just need to build each other up. I know you love each other. Why say things that are hurtful? Will this fight matter in ten years?”

“Well he did see it,” Laylee said in that really annoying voice of a Disney star, who’s bound to get busted for shoplifting or a DUI because she’s so mad to be 18 and still playing a 13-year-old snot face on TV.

AAAAAHHHH.

Then the thought came to my mind, the best way to behavior modify is to set a good example. You’re supposed to love them into wanting to be kind.

But that takes too long.

Maybe if I love them really really hard.

So I grabbed Magoo and asked Dan to grab Laylee and I said, “You guys are obviously sad because you don’t feel loved enough. We’re just gonna love you until you can be kind to each other. We’re gonna love you like widdle babies, yes we are, goochy-goo-googly goo.”

We scooped them up into our arms, 7 and 9 year old infants, giggling and struggling to get free.

“Do you feel loved enough to be kind? I just want to love my widdle Magooly-face until he feels the love in his heart just spilling over into the way he talks to his sister. Do you feel loved enough?”

At this point we were rocking them back and forth and everyone was laughing.

“Yes, I feel loved, I feel loved. Put me down!”

So we did. And the cycle was broken. The fighting stopped. Stellar parenting? Not necessarily. But it got the job done. Love heals all, even raucaus, what-the-heck-are-you-doing-Mom love.

Photobomb

January 9, 2013 by Kathryn

It felt like a betrayal of pencils and chalk and teachers’ mugs full of bad coffee. This year, for the first time ever, I did not order school pictures for my kids.

I have a camera larger than a VW Bug, I thought. I’ve totally got this.

We haven’t had great luck with school pictures in the past and they cost more money than my collection of Boy Band MP3s, which, not to brag, is extensive. It was a win-win because I could save money, get better pictures, and feel like a sort of awesome hipster photographer mom because I took them myself with my own neck-strapped paparazzi device.

It ended up that the pictures were WAY cheaper than usual. The cost was zero dollars because I did not take them. Oops.

There are pictures of my kids on my cell phone so we will remember that they were alive this year, just not with perfectly coiffed hair or facial expressions that say, Someone just told me to smile while I’m surrounded by big white umbrellas and a mottled blue vinyl backdrop.

Well, Dan knew we weren’t doing pictures so he was confused when he came home from work one day and found a school photo package envelope sitting on the kitchen counter with Magoo’s name on it.

“What’s this?” he said, picking it up. “I thought we weren’t ordering school pictures.”

“Wait. What? Why are all of Magoo’s school pictures actually pictures of you?”

PHOTOBOMB!

“I snuck into Magoo’s school, waited in the photographer’s black supply trunk for hours with nothing but the birds, angry, angry birds to keep me company. I bided my time and just as the photographer commanded him to smile, I burst from concealment and jumped in front of the camera. ‘Boo-ya! PHOTO-BOMBED, CHUMP!’”

“No, seriously. Why are you in his pictures?”

“They take pictures of all the school volunteers so they can make us name badges and they… um… sent mine home with Magoo so they had to put his name on the package.”

I think Dan found that explanation slightly disappointing. Didn’t we all?

“Oh,” he said.

But, the good news is, I do have my own child ID cards now from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. So, if Dan ever loses me in a mosh pit or a sea of clearance purses at Macy’s, he’ll have an easier time helping the police track me down.

I Never Eat Boogers

November 16, 2009 by Kathryn

I don’t even like them.

Okay. So I’ve never even tried, not even as a child, not one booger Sam I Am but I just know. I would not eat one in a box or wearing sox or while writing with chalks. There was never a time in my whole wide life that I wasn’t repulsed by the sight of some young buck slurping his own secretions. From my earliest memories I’ve known that doing so was sick and wrong.

And so today I sat in discussion with one of my children, locked in eye contact when the individual-in-question pulled a nugget from its cavern and shlumped it into their mouth without batting an eyelash.

Gah!

“You are a Thompson!” I wanted to shout, “Thompsons are anti-boog-ites. Thompsons know right from wrong. Thompsons will now all go and rinse their mouths out with disinfectant, gargle, rinse with bleach and repeat.”

I did make the individual-in-question rinse and gargle before we could continue talking. I did extol the virtues of a booger-snack-free lifestyle. What more can I do? I can’t rinse and gargle mental images away. That one will always be burned in my memory.

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