The acorn that thankfully rolled far from the oak

The Boy came into my office tonight with a puzzle in one hand and a seat cushion in the other.

He’d gotten a bunch of puzzles for Christmas, smallish ones, mostly with superhero motifs. I’ve had a lot of fun watching he and The Missus put them together, but I’m not really much of a puzzle guy. Or for that matter, a game guy either. Okay, or a crafts guy… Our time together is mostly spent watching movies and cartoons or engaging in non-structured horseplay. I also like to fill his head full of outlandish exaggerations and calculated misinformation (ala the Dad in “Calvin and Hobbes”), and see how much of it he calls me on. As a result, he’s already developed an excellent bullshit detector.

We also play “Good Guy/Bad Guy.” This game consists of the image of a public figure—real or imaginary—flashing by on the TV screen and me pointing to The Boy and demanding “Good Guy or Bad Guy?” He’s uncannily accurate at that game, too. He’s learning to pick up on things like facial expressions, body language and probably ominous background music. Just yesterday we were all watching an episode of “The Daily Show” from earlier in the week and an image of George W Bush flashed by. I hit the Pause button and barked, “Good Guy or Bad Guy?”

After a brief pause, he answered, “Bad Guy.”

The Missus was fine with that, but she’s gotten upset at this game before. Like when we were watching a WWII-era Superman cartoon and one of the characters turned a photo of the statue of liberty over to reveal a drawing of the Japanese flag. I didn’t even have to ask; he turned to me and announced, “Bad Guy!” (I maintain he observed the sneakiness of the hiding of the emblem and responded to that, but The Missus thinks the racist caricature of the enemy agent may have had more to do with it. In which case, though, why would he wait till the flag was turned over to draw his conclusion?)

Anyhow, my point is, I’ve never done a puzzle with The Boy before, except once when he received one as a birthday gift and I received an order from the giver to do it with him. I had pictures taken and sent them to her and figured my puzzle-playing days were behind me.

So I was taken completely aback when he walked in tonight. He said, “Would you do a puzzle with me, Dad?” He waved the seat cushion and added, “I brought you this so you wouldn’t hurt yourself with your back.”

I said, “Did your Mom put you up to this?” Both the puzzle and the seat cushion seemed suspicious to me. But no, it turned out to be completely his idea, even the seat cushion to lessen the impact of sitting on our thinly-carpeted floor on my increasingly gimpy back.

He’s getting to the age where the surprises are coming thick and fast. And one of the most welcome surprises is just how decent and thoughtful a young fellow he’s becoming.

Somebody’s doing something right with him and I’m pretty sure it isn’t me.