…catch a boomerang

My bowl of caffe latte is on my lap.

Noah is pushed up against my side, traces of cereal stuck on the corner of his mouth. He’s humming some tune or other. I try to lift the bowl to my lips but Noah’s hand is in the way. He’s playing with the steam rising from the coffee.

“So hot! Look, dad, I’m taming the smoke.”

He runs his fingers like a guitar riff. The troubled steam curls this way and that.

“The steam is wafting.”

“It’s farting?”

“No….wafting. It means when it moves like that through the air, gently, beautifully.”

“What a word…wafting. Waft a waft a waft,,,sounds like a helicopter, you know waftawaftawafta…”

His hand imitates a helicopter flying off. Gives me a brief moment when I can raise the cup and sip some necessary caffeine.

“Dad, you drink it when it’s still smoking? You’ll burn yourself, get the fuzzy tongue, you know?”

“Not if I sip it.”

“Oh!”

“And I like the coffee when it’s burning hot.”

“I like iced-coffee.”

No, no, all you gasping parents… he doesn’t drink coffee, not yet.

“You’re so 21st century!”

“And you’re like so … old! Ha! Gotcha!”

He pokes me with a scrawny finger. Little bitch!

“Geez Noah, that was sharp.”

I grab his hand and examine the nails.

“Noah, look how long and how dirty your nails are. You look like a zombie that had to dig himself out of the grave.”

It’s barely an exaggeration.

Of course he jumps me in a zombie attack. I fight him off while safeguarding my coffee.

“Noah, stop, stop…go get the nail clipper.”

“Naw…I like long nails, they’re my secret weapons.”

“Come on kid, there’s just a few minutes left before the bus. Go get the clipper and cut those things.”

He huffs, but still crawls off me and heads to the bathroom. He comes back and flops on the futon with the clippers.

Click and a scimitar shaped nail goes flying by my head. I throw him a nasty look.

“Sorry dad, but I told you they were my secret weapons.”

“Yeah, well try to gather your blades into a little pile that can be thrown out.”

“It’s more fun this way.” He says it just as another one goes flying.

“What? you expect the maid to pick them up after you?”

“You do it so well, my little maid.”

I swear his rabbit teeth have grown an inch, he’s smiling so widely.

I suddenly realize I’ve been defending domestic things. Why? I hate all things domestic. If I could, I would walk the earth, naked, following the invisible songlines in the ground, like an Australian aborigine. I would be fulfilled.

A nail clipping goes flying by my nose, accompanied by the little dork’s thick, lusty laugh. If only it was a boomerang that would fly back and whack him.

Just then, almost in slow motion, I see a bit of nail fly from the clipper straight up and into Noah’s eye. His head snaps back.

“Aaaaahhhhhhhh…….my eye!”

Yaaayyyy… Youuupieee…Hurray! Justice!

“Dad, it hurts! I can’t see anymore.”

“Take your hand off your eye you’ll see better.”

His eye is teary. A small red mark on the skin an inch from his eye indicates the projectile’s place of impact.

“It missed the eye, you’ll survive.”

“Dad, you’re so nasty.”

“Yeah, us maids aren’t paid enough to be nice.”

Bam!

Don’t toy with the aborigines, especially the domestic ones.