Bruce Cameron

Editor’s Note: The following column was originally published in 2009.

I was once asked during a job interview, “If you could be anybody in the world, who would it be?” I replied honestly, “My 5-year-old son.”

The same interviewer, reading from a list of questions, also asked, “If you could be any kind of animal, what would you be?”

I guess I was supposed to reply “panther,” a sleek predator hunting for prey in the corporate jungle, or maybe “eagle,” soaring regally, taking in the big picture and yet able to instantly spot trouble on the ground. Instead, I said, “Bunny rabbit.”

I didn’t get the job.

I stand by my answer, though. One summer it was my job to take care of the neighbor’s rabbits, and it didn’t take long for me to reach the conclusion that bunnies spend most of their time industriously working on making other bunnies. What other animal would you want to be?

I also believe that there was no happier person on the planet than my 5-year-old son, who basically was a puppy in tennis shoes. I’d seen him swoon with ecstasy over events as diverse as finding a dead squirrel rotting by the side of the road to having the downstairs toilet back up.

When I told him that his sisters and mother would be going out of town and that it would be “just us” for a few days, he celebrated by taking all of his ninja toys and throwing them down the laundry chute. This was evidence of high excitement, indeed — as much as he thrilled to seeing his little guys tumble into the darkness, he was too afraid to go down to the basement by himself to retrieve them, and would thus be deprived of his entire army until the next load of whites.

After our first “bachelor” dinner together, I sat and read a book while he ran around and around the house as if I’d fed him amphetamines. After a while, I noticed something big and black in his mouth. “Son, what are you eating?” I asked.

“A big raisin,” he replied, smiling so that I could see something the size of a large egg in his teeth.

“Show me,” I ordered.

The “big raisins” came from a jar labeled “Prunes.”

“Uh, just how many of these big raisins did you eat?” I asked worriedly.

“Only this one,” he assured me. “Do you want it?” He spat it out and handed it to me, his face so innocently generous I had to act as if he’d given me a great gift.

“I’ll save it for later,” I told him.

His joy left him like air from a tire blowout when I announced it was bedtime. “No!” he wailed, falling to the floor with a sob. Getting his uncooperative body into his pajamas was like wrestling with a drunk monkey, his limbs slack and lifeless with protest over the cruel unfairness of it all.

I read him a book about a chicken who thought he was a duck and then another one about a turtle who lived with a cat, both stories far more believable than Joan Rivers’ face.

I was stretched out in a comfortable chair in the living room when I heard him call from down the hall.

“Dad?”

“Yes, son.”

“I need a drink of water.”

I put my book down and fetched him a cup of water — he drank like he’d just spent eight days on a life raft.

I headed back to the living room.

“Dad?”

“Yes, son.”

“I need to go to the bathroom.”

“You just went to the bathroom.”

“Yeah, but then I drank all that water.”

“OK, but hurry up.”

After a few minutes, I heard water running into the bathtub.

“What are you doing?” I demanded of my son, naked except for his diving goggles.

“I forgot to take a bath.”

“No, you didn’t. You took a bath earlier.”

“I forgot to take a bath yesterday. “

It took several minutes to get him dry and back into bed.

“Dad? When does everybody come home?”

“Two more nights.”

He sighed. “This is the most fun ever.”

And, looking back on it nearly two decades later, I have to agree.

(Bruce Cameron has a website at http://www.wbrucecameron.com. To find out more about Bruce Cameron and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at http://www.creators.com.)

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