Oops sorry, the holidays took me away. So where was I? Right. Precious, he and his Dad met me in West Hollywood so that I could take him to the Getty. When I walked up to them, Precious was not having any of it. He did not want to go, he just wanted to go home. Boy was he grumpy. I finally figured out that it was because of the mid-week switch from his Mom's to his Dad's that was making him so uncomfortable.
I thought to myself, that must be so hard for him and upped my patience level with Precious. I convinced him to go with me for a half hour, told him if he didn't like it we would leave, and off we went.
We get off the 405 at the right place, but we take a wrong turn. Precious starts to freak out because he sees all the traffic we are going to have to sit in on the way back. I am not the best driver, so internally his freak out was making me freak out. I pushed through though, and told him to respect me. He did, and it didn't take us long at all to find the Getty and next thing you know we are on the tram above the Hills and the view was spectacular, but no where near as spectacular as the view once we reached the top.
I forgot to mention that I had busted Precious in a few small fibs earlier in the week, which I'm sure all 12-year-old boys do, but it broke my heart because this kid is so cool already that he doesn't have to make anything up.
Anyway, the first piece of art that we see is a photograph of a sentence from a book that said "he lied so much he began to believe his own narrative." Precious read it and asked me what narrative meant. I told him and he got it. We both felt it, like some next level shit, art imitating life and speaking to us because we had the patience and the strength to push through.
Next we look at the old oil paintings. We talk about how amazing it is that they haven't cracked and he says something (I can't remember what) that prompts me to tell him that he is very literal. He asks me what that means and I tell him. Later on he calls back to it and says, "Sue I was just being literal."
As we move through the museum we see a yellow piece of wood leaning against a wall and he says, "C'mon Sue I could do this." I say, "Of course you could."
When we’re done, we stop to get a snack at an outside stand. Precious tells me that he wants a tuna sandwich. I say, "Don't get the tuna it's gonna be gross, it's been sitting out all day, get the burrito, it will be better." He says to the woman behind the counter "I'll have the tuna sandwich." When she puts it on the counter, he looks at it and says, "Can I have the burrito instead?"
When we finish we clean up after ourselves and go home. On the drive home I ask Precious if he saw that he didn't need to be so nervous when everything wasn't perfect. I say that's part of maturing, when you have really uncomfortable feelings and you don't take them out on others, you push through them and get the rewards.
He looked at me nods and asks, "Then I can be successful?" and I respond, "Literally."
