Tear-inducing moments, Beckett edition

There have been plenty.

1) Beckett heard Black Sabbath's "Iron Man" once in the car about a year ago. He hasn't gotten the tune out of his head since. He doesn't have the slightest idea what the hell Ozzy's saying either, but there's no debating that great guitar riffs are universal.

2) At the occasionally distressingly authentic Mexican restaurant we go to all the time Beckett pointed to one of the menu pictures two weeks ago and said, "Dad, I want the whole fried fish." Head, tail, everything. Damned if he didn't eat half the thing too, picking it off the bones with fork and finger and having to be told that no, you don't have to eat the eyeball if you don't want to. He kind of wanted to.

3) Rusty, a friend and father of Beckett's buddy Owen, plowed into me in an aggressive but clean play for the ball in our indoor soccer league last year. We were jockeying for the ball and he got it with a little elbow play, slamming me into the wall. Nothing wrong there. Until the following week, when my Beckett summarily humiliated me about the incident, asking "Dad, is Rusty going to nail you again? Elbows have been sharpened ever since.

4) Exchange #1
Dad: I gotta go to work now. See you tonight for fajitas.
Beckett: I don't want fajitas. I want vegetables.
Dad:
Beckett: Like zucchini.
Dad: Umm.
Beckett: Or those cucumbers in - what is it called? - vinegar.
Dad: Er, I gotta go to work now.

5) Exchange #2
Beckett: Dada, why can't we see the wind?
Dad: Umm.
Beckett:
Dad: Because wind is made of of molecules that are too small to see. You can see wind's effects in the trees blowing and dust hurtling about, but we can't actually see wind itself. The molecules are too small for our eyes.
Beckett: Dad, why don't you just answer the question?

5) At Kostaki's Pizza, where pictures of Babe Ruth and Mickey Mantle line the walls:

Beckett (pointing at a photo of Mantle): Dada, is that Gradpa's favorite player?
Dad: Yes it was.
Beckett: He didn't sign his autograph for Grandpa, did he? When Grandpa was a kid?
Dad: No he didn't, Beckett. You're right.
Beckett (pointing at Ruth's picture): That guy was better.
Dad: Yes Beckett, he was. He really was.

6) The number six tear-inducing moment happens quite often nowadays. Beckett and a good gaggle of neighborhood kids are at the age where running freely, from house to house and swingset to swingset are becoming standard activities. Kids have taken to knocking on the door to ask if Beckett can come out to play. After I explain that Beckett has been cryogenically frozen so that he forever remains in his always endearing, occasionally frustrating current state at four and a half years of age, they usually back away. Truth is, half the time he comes to the door and tells them, "No, I'm playing with my Dada." The door closes and they leave. Beckett stays and reenacts something from last night's Olympics. Or simply flits about for a few moments muttering insensible goofiness (see above picture for proper facial expression) and bonks his kid sister gently on the head. The days that happens are quickly ticking away; we will forever miss them.