Nice! I like that shirt, Nephew on the Dead.
“Yeah? You into Queen?”
Hugely so.
“Uh-huh. What’s the second verse to The Fairy-Feller’s Master Stroke?”
What now?
“Who opened for them on the Day At The Races Tour?”
Why are you asking me these things? It was Thin Lizzy, by the way, but what’s going on?
“A lot of people say they’re Queen fans, and what they mean is that they have the Greatest Hits album. Filthy casuals.”
Nephew!
“I’m messing with you. I have no idea who Queen is. You know I don’t choose my own clothing, right?”
I forgot. You sound so mature sometimes.
“The Guy put this on me. He was giggling the whole time.”
He and your mom have worked out a rather strict arrangement of how much goofy Rock and Roll bullshit he’s allowed to dress you in. If it weren’t for her, you’d look like a tiny merch table and have a mural of KISS fighting the Planet of the Apes in your room.
“That sounds terrifying.”
In the dark, to a baby? Wow, yeah. I’ll tell him not to do that. How’s the walking coming?
“Dude, I walk so good. I can walk to anything I want to walk to. Just gotta be level ground. And clear. Gotta be clear. The other day, I wanted to be by the window. You know the window?”
I do.
“Love the window. I’m by the front door closet looking at the doorknob. Then I wanted to be by the window. When I try to walk across the room, my giraffe is on the floor. You know my giraffe?”
I do.
“Love my giraffe. And I couldn’t decide whether I should stop and pick him up or step over him, so I kinda did both. I went ass over teakettle.”
You’ll get better at everything. Don’t rush it.
“Gotcha. Who is this Queen person on my shirt?”
It’s a band. They played loud and were from England.
“Ah. Pass.”
You haven’t even heard them.
“I might have. It all sounds the same to me. Y’know what I dig?”
What?
“Baby music! I get up and dance, man. Acoustic guitar, some silly lyrics: that’s my jam. Maybe some harmonizing. I love that stuff.”
But why?
“Why do I like Baby music? Because I’m a baby, dummy. The corpus of material and method of presentation has been pared through evolution over years. Baby music was perfected, and essentially weaponized, sometime in the 1990’s by the CIA through their asset, Codename: Raffi.”
…
What?
“Messing with you. I like Baby music because I’m a baby! Bouncy and happy and repetitious with silly lyrics.”
You should listen to Phish.
“I’ll make a note of it once I learn to write.”
Love you, buddy.
I would watch the hell out of an animation of these conversations.