Breaking hearts at 22 months

So here’s the thing – day care costs us an arm and a leg. The lady who runs the day care out of her house is this very sweet, warm Indian woman in her 50s or 60s, name rhymes with Yoda. She’s always put on a big show of being happy to see The Man Cub when I drop him off, but I figure that’s just part of the job. She’s been doing day care out of her home from the ‘70s, I think. She’s raised generations of Christmas Island’s most precocious children. I don’t give it another thought.

The Man Cub turns 2 in September, and we’ve been counting the days and pinching the pennies till we could move him to the hippie preschool right down the street for a couple of hundred bucks less a month. But still, The Missus has been dreading giving notice to rhymes-with-Yoda. I assured her all of the stuff at the end of the previous paragraph. “This is not going to be a big deal for her,” I say, “and some other lucky parent is going to move from her wait-list to her actual day care. Everybody is going to win on this one.”

I mean, this just makes sense. How many kids have passed through her doors in 30 years??

Obviously, you can see where this is going. The Missus runs the boy out to day care this morning and to deliver the ‘bad’ news to rhymes-with-Yoda. I’m sitting down to watch last night’s episode of “Entourage” (I don’t know what we pay for HBO, but between Entourage, Flight of the Conchords, Big Love and The Wire, it’s got to be damned near worth it), and the phone rings. It’s 8:10 a.m. and I resolve to verbally decapitate anyone from work calling me this early on a Monday.

No worries, it’s The Missus. Turns out rhymes-with-Yoda freaked out when she received the news, pleaded with The Missus not to take the boy out, professed “He’s the best one!” in front of another parent and damned near broke down in tears. The Missus pled poverty and rhymes-with-Yoda immediately countered with “Well, we can talk about money. Prices go down after they’re two!” So now The Missus and I have to sit down tonight and re-talk over this decision that I thought was already in the can, then we have to go talk to rhymes-with-Yoda and either dicker with her, break her heart again or (probably) both.

My boy’s delivered his first broken heart — he’s on his way to being a Bastardson! Somewhere in Phoenix, my Spiritual Advisor is smiling.