Since we watched the first two seasons of the BBC series “Primeval” on DVD, the exclamation, “Oy! You!” has become a permanant addition to my lexicon. I’d bet my books that not a single episode passes without the cute blonde zoologist, Abby, shouting this at least once. It’s very endearing. (Early episodes also inevitably included gratuitous shots of her barely-clad bottom as she padded around her flat in her undies, but those seemed to have tapered off by season two.)
Far better than other outbursts you might hear in our household, “Oy!” has become my go-to phrase of choice. It’s quite versatile; a note up or down changes your tone from mild annoyance to I’ve-had-it-up-to-here!
Last night it was, “Oy! Would you look at that?”
Lance and Vincent carved a big pumpkin. When asked if he wanted a scary or a friendly pumpkin, Vincent said, “Scary.”
Lance got to work — Vincent’s only real contributions were as critic and occasional picker-upper of a seed or two. He did spontaneously strip off his shirt, but when asked to put his hand in and clean out the guts, he said, “Oh no, I’m too little. Daddy will do that.” Oy.
In the end, however, Daddy did too good of a job. When he finished, lit the candles, and turned off the lights, the ta-da moment was interrupted by the sound of Vincent sobbing.
“It’s too scary! It’s too scary, Daddy!”
Oy.
Not that I disagree entirely. That’s one freaky pumpkin.
As I was putting Aidan in his pajamas, I heard Vincent rummaging in the silverware drawer. (Don’t talk to me about child-proofing. We did, our drawers are child-proofed. Vincent conquered the contraptions in 3 weeks.) When I went to check on him, he was about to deface the pumpkin with a butter knife: he wants to add a second nose between its eyes, quite reasonably explaining that this will solve the whole “too scary” conundrum.
He’s not wrong. But I still confiscated the knife. Oy!
My second reading this week, this time without the 3-ring circus of my kids, was super. Some friends who’d never been to a poetry reading before came, so it was fun to introduce them to the experience and demonstrate that it’s not that scary after all. And I enjoyed the mix of themes and styles that resulted by reading with Kim Rogers. (We’re doing it again in November, this time as part of the Green Street Poetry Series in Northampton.) AND I sold a few chapbooks, to people I don’t even know, which is new and different and wild.
