ME ‘N BENNY

Me ‘n Benny hung out last night—kind of a date. His mom and dad were busy with an activity for Benny’s older sister, and he needed a ride to basketball practice.

Amazingly, Benny always seems genuinely happy to hang out with me. He came charging in the door, full of ideas about what we could play before it was time to go to basketball.

Benny’s in kindergarten. I wasn’t sure if Benny’s mother wanted his picture pasted all over the Internet, so here’s Benny taken last Halloween, in disguise, with his sneering pirate look:

Arrrrrgh! Shiver me timbers, matey! I’ll make those bilge rats walk the plank!

Before we had to head out for basketball, we played a quick game of Jenga. Sometimes we cheated a little, but nobody cared. We grinned at each other when one of us pulled a wooden block out of a particularly teetery spot. ‘We are good,’ we told each other, fist pumping.

Then we headed over to the school for basketball practice. Here’s Benny and the guys warming up before practice.

He’s a trooper. I loved watching him warm up. He made four baskets—and he ran over and told me after each one of them.

After basketball, Benny came over to my house for a half hour and we played. All of my toys are kind of low-tech or old, but Benny doesn’t seem to care. We filled a 9 x 13 cake pan with wild rice (looks more like dirt than white or brown rice) and plowed it around with all the little Matchbox dump trucks. We built roads out of Jenga blocks. We just kind of made things up as we went along. Benny provided a running color commentary on our activities. He’s got such a good imagination that it made our dump-truck-rice-in-a-cake-pan scenario seem exciting and dangerous.

Me ‘n Benny. Hanging out.