The Melting World

Sorry for the long silence. We took a lovely vacation to Tokyo, but more on that later.

On Monday night my son and I went to our local sports center to play in the toddler room. An older woman with a soapy left eye came in with her grandson (who turned out to be just two weeks my son’s elder) and invited us to ‘warm-up’ with the wrestling class her husband and a younger man were teaching.

We joined them and began by racing about the wrestling ring. My son loved it, screaming and falling onto his belly whenever his feet couldn’t catch up with his upper body. He must have run about 20 times around the ring.

Then we sat in the circle to do leg and arm stretches. The younger coach was the size of a sumo wrestler, and when seated he really looked like Mount Fuji. He had a stern facade, yelling gruffly at the older kids to work harder, but the twinkle in his eye betrayed his true nature.

My son must have seen this in the gigantic man because although my son occasionally sat down (usually in the center of the circle) to imitate the stretching exercises, he spent most of the time running around and through the circle. He often stopped sharply by the mountainous man and chattered at him. Then he snuck over on his tiptoes and stepped on the man’s foot. This was really like a fly landing on a big bear. The Big Bear growled and swooped at my son, who made a hysterical mad dash out of the big arm’s way.

My son has a tendency to court danger, and this night was no exception. He did this foot stepping antic about three times before we moved on to somersaults and wheelbarrows.

In the end, my son had a grand time, so I think we’ll be back next Monday, whether the Big Bear is ready or not.