Quipster

Yesterday, after Marty's first soccer game, which was played in a steady rain, heavy wind and temperatures in the 40's, he came off the field crying in pain because his frozen hands hurt. After he called down and we were walking towards the car, he looked at me and said, "I hope our next game is on a 'Sun'-day." I looked at his grinning face, and he just said, "Get it?"

"Get it?," is Marty's favorite phrase. He punctuates many, many sentences with it.

Earlier today, I asked him what he was doing. The response was, "I'm just trying to make a living here."

Sometimes, talking to him is like talking to that robot from the '80's Guttenberg movie, "Short Circuit," where it just repeats phrases that it heard on television. Marty not only quotes movies, TV shows and commercials, he's also an advertisers dream when it comes to the power of suggestion. It doesn't have to even be a commercial. When he was watching the Black Eyed Peas on the Nickelodeon Kids Choice Awards, suddenly he went, "Do we have any apple juice?" (I'm not sure that's what apl.de.ap was going for with the name, but he might want to consider a deal with Mott's.) We were driving in Chicago one time and he started asking me about Mackinaw Island...after about two minutes I noticed the name of the street we were on was Mackinaw.

He's been this way for a while. A couple of years ago, Amy tried to tell him that his godmother was getting married. "Welcome to my world," he said. "What does that mean?," she said. Casey, who would've been three, said, "It means, welcome to my world," before adding, "I don't have any hair." With sad, world weary eyes, Marty looked at Amy again, shook his head and said, "Welcome to my world."

A little later that day, he decided to ask more about the wedding and as he was having it explained to him, Amy mentioned that when a man marries your aunt, he becomes your uncle. "Like Uncle Bob?," Marty asked. When he was told that was not quite right, but sort of, he responeded, "No, thank you. I don't want another uncle."

Amy never did bother explaining the fact that he already had multiple uncles before that and for all we know, he still believes that there's only his favorite uncle...and that's it.

Sure, it confuses other kids when he randomly quotes Daffy Duck cartoons. Heck, he confuses other kids with out of context quotes from Spongebob Squarepants. But, maybe he's just working on his craft.

A few years ago, we got back his school picture...which looked eerily similar to "The Kramer," the portrait of Kramer in the Seinfeld episode. I asked him why he had looked like that. He said, "Well, I was going for scared, but it ended up coming out as sad." He took the picture and looked at it again. "I've got to work on my scared," he said, and walked away.