Listening Skills Required

At some point during the month of January, I sit down and schedule doctor, eye, and dentist appointments for everyone. And judging by the lack of listening skills being demonstrated by Zach lately, I should probably schedule an appointment for him with a hearing specialist as well.

On Monday night, while we were in the car, I decided to fill the boys in on the schedule for the rest of the week. Zach was in the front seat, as usual, so I knew he'd be able to hear me without much difficulty. Actually listening? Well, that's another matter.

"Hey, Zach." I wanted to make sure I had his attention before I started talking about anything too specific.

"Hey, what?"

"You need to come to tennis on Thursday because we're having dinner with grandpa after Charlie's lesson. Okay?"

"Oh. What? Did you say something? All I heard was 'Zach.'" How moronic of me to assume that just because his eyes were open and he said "Hey," that he was actually conscious.

After letting out a long sigh and deciding not to reach over and whack him in the forehead because, after all, the safest way to drive is with both hands on the steering wheel and not beating your child, I managed to exasperatedly repeat myself, to which he replied: "Okay, jeez."

A few minutes later, Charlie told us that one of his friends saw Avatar 3D and thought it was so cool, and maybe they could go see it, too.

Zach said: "Some of my friends saw it too. We should definitely go."

At the beginning of Christmas break, Doug asked the boys if they wanted to see Avatar. Charlie said, "Oh, that's the movie with the blue people." Zach didn't really say much of anything, and didn't seem very interested. So, Doug interpreted their overwhelming enthusiasm as "No." This was fine with me, since it saved us $50.00.

"Really? So now you want to see it?" I asked.

"What do you mean now? When would we have seen it before?" Did he really have no memory of Doug mentioning this movie?

"Uh, maybe over Christmas break? Your dad said, 'Hey, does anyone want to go see Avatar 3D?' and you didn't respond or show any interest."

"He asked us that? I don't remember that at all. When did the movie come out? Are you sure he asked us about Avatar and not some other movie?"

I didn't even bother replying. What the hell else other movie would he have been asking them about -- Alvin and The Chipmunks? Princess And The Frog? Retarded 3D?

After a few minutes of silence, I changed the topic to sports.

"Hey. Remember when Mark McGwire said that he never did steroids? Well, it turns out he was lying. Shocking news, I know. He just admitted today that he is, in fact, guilty of steroid use."

"Oh. That's cool." I could tell by the tone of his response that his brain was busy processing the different colors of the Best Buy sign that we were driving by.

Sure enough, while reading the sports section on Tuesday morning, he tells me: "Hey mom! Check this out! Mark McGwire is admitting to steroid use after all! What a liar!"

Now, instead of taking the opportunity to bring up the fact that I had already shared this tidbit of information with him yesterday, I simply said, "Oh, wow." and let him continue reading the article. I could have started lecturing him about how he doesn't listen to me, and how he only listens to what he thinks is important, but he wouldn't have heard me anyway, and then I would have been mad about that, and would have complained to him about how he doesn't listen to me when I'm mad, and he wouldn't have heard me anyway.