"What's what?" I asked.

"That what I'm pointing at!"

"I can't see what you're pointing at when I'm driving," I said.

"What about your eyes in the back of your head?" he asked.

Uh-oh. Mommies and daddies have eyes in the back of their heads, I told him a few weeks ago.

"Those eyes can only see you when you're being bad," I said, adding one more sticky strand to the web.

I must have mumbled.

"Daddy?" Kyle asked. "What does T-I-T spell?"

It's just a good thing I didn't have food in my mouth.

KYLE: Daddy, can I play the Xbox?

ME: [trying to coax a "please"] Can you play the Xbox...what?

KYLE: The Xbox 360!

"Look at this," I said, pointing to the door handle shaped like a gas pump nozzle, "pretty cool, huh?"

No reaction, but he's four years old and has never seen a gas pump nozzle up close, so I really don't know what I was expecting.

The door closed behind us and I directed him to the urinal.

"Wow!" he exclaimed. "A new kind of toilet! This restaurant is awesome!"

KYLE: Daddy, don't be dead!

ME (without opening my eyes): I'm not dead, I'm knocked out.

KYLE: Well, get knocked back in!

Laura and I will stop Kyle in his tracks and begin the process of (a) cleaning up whatever vomit has already been delivered and (b) attempting to catch any subsequent outbursts somewhere between his lips and the nearest horizontal surface (or his shirt). This latter act is typically achieved through the application of tissues, as they are usually the closest thing to a towel or washcloth within reach. Unfortunately, attempting to catch vomit—even from a four-year-old whose stomach is the size of (as near I can guess) a softball—with a tissue is a bit like trying to catch spaghetti with a broadsword, only slimier.

Yesterday, after Kyle's lunch made an encore appearance on the living room carpet, Laura decided it was time to introduce "the pail".  She retrieved an empty four-quart ice cream container from the garage, I filled the bottom with about a half-inch of water, and we instructed Kyle that—should he feel the need to vomit again—he should aim for the bucket. Kyle immediately decided that it an old ice cream pail with a bit of water in the bottom was pretty cool, which led to an "accidental" spill about 30 minutes later. "It was a accident," he declared1 as Laura was cleaning up the spilled water.

Thankfully, there were no further spills, but later in the day there was more vomit, not all of which made it into the pail. Laura stood there, pail in hand, coaching Kyle on the proper angle of approach necessary to ensure optimum target efficiency, while I grabbed a pile of washclothes from the kitchen and made some attempt to clean up the mess, starting with Kyle's face.2

None of this seems to phase Kyle in the slightest. "I puked," he says, then stands by with what little patience a four year old can muster and waits for us to clean up the mess.3 If we weren't there to hold him back, he'd just play around the puddle on the carpet for a bit, pausing only to make a new, smaller puddle when the aftershock hit. This isn't how adults do it: we slump with our heads over the toilet (or the pail), often huddling there long after the last heave has been hove, just in case. Never does the thought of getting up and running around wander anywhere in thinking distance; we just want to be still. When we barf, we might as well clear our calendar for the rest of the day. Wimps.

1. He pronounces the word "ASS-i-dent" and uses it like a "Get Out of Jail Free" card or his own little form of diplomatic immunity. I imagine that I'm Murtaugh on the deck of the Alba Varden, Kyle has just shot Riggs, and he looks up at me and sneers, "It was a assident." What's a father to do?
2. If there's anything worse than a puking child, it's a puking child with a runny nose. And diarrhea, but that didn't play a factor in this particular incident.
3. Or rather, that's how it worked yesterday. I'm told that sometime this morning he announced his intention to be sick, trotted over to the pail, and proceeded to cantar oaxaca directly into it. They grow up so quickly.

From his car seat behind me, Kyle asked, "Why did you say 'Gobble gobble gobble'?"

"Because that's the sound a turkey makes," I said. "Well, a live turkey, anyway."

"But not dead ones?" Kyle asked.

"No," I admitted. "Not dead ones. The one we're getting is a frozen turkey."

"Frozen?" Kyle asked. "In carbonite?"

"This," I said, turning the deep-fried wonton stuffed with cream cheese and crab meat over between my fingers, "is a rangoon."

Kyle turned to his cousin and exclaimed, "He's eating a raccoon!"

"Daddy," he said. "I had a dream."

This is pretty standard stuff these days: Kyle marches into our bedroom in the morning to tell us about his dreams of the previous night.

"You were there," Kyle said, "and mommy was there."

Nothing at all unusual about that; most of his dreams feature Laura and I.

"And I had ice cream," he said.

Ah, there's the wish-fulfillment aspect. Kyle had been denied ice cream twice yesterday: once because he had just eaten a popsicle and a second time because he wouldn't eat his dinner.

"And Uncle Miller took my ice cream away."

That's harsh, Miller. Harsh.

Before Kyle was born, I banished the prequels from my home. Even after I began his training—introducing him to the space opera by way of the LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy video game on my old Xbox—I was determined that the prequels would not sully my DVD player. We played the entire game together, and he experienced Tattooine, Yavin IV, Hoth, Dagobah, Cloud City and the forest moon of Endor in a multitude of interlocking bricks. When I upgraded to an Xbox 360, I decided that there was little harm in upgrading to LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga as well. I'd played through the prequel trilogy LEGO game before my son was old enough to pick up a controller and found that (surprise!) it's much more entertaining when there's no intelligible dialog.

A few months ago, we graduated from the video game to the movies. Despite a few bumps (he's not terribly fond of the Wampa ice creature in The Empire Strikes Back; ditto for Luke's encounter with Vader in the tree-cave on Dagobah and Jabba the Hutt's menagerie in Return of the Jedi) the movies are a big hit at the International House of Johnson, and I get requests to watch them on a daily basis.

Then a couple of weeks ago I decided to lift my ban on the prequels. I realized that as much as I reviled them, the prequel films would be right up my son's alley. He'd already been inoculated: he loves Yoda in all of his puppety glory, pretends to be Han Solo and Luke Skywalker,2 refers to a Belle (Beauty & The Beast) PEZ dispenser as "yellow Princess Leia", runs around the house yelling "Open the blast doors!" and "Oota goota, Solo?"; he even knows who is "in Darth Vader". But there was an entire trilogy's worth of characters that he'd only ever seen in LEGO minifig form.

So I borrowed Star Wars: The Clone Wars from the local library. He'd seen the endless advertisements for the series on Cartoon Network and would often strike a Power Rangers-esque stance while yelling "Star Wars the Cone Wars!"—he's not so good with the letter L just yet—so I thought we could ease into the prequels with the animated adventures of Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker. The reaction upon seeing the Star Wars logo was pretty much what I expected—an explosion of ecstatic joy—but the movie didn't really hold his interest beyond a few oohs and aahs during one of the lightsaber battles.

I suspected that my son would be more interested in the familiar characters and situations in The Phantom Menace, so I picked up the DVD from The Exchange, my local used music/movie/video game store. We watched the movie together and I saw everything that made me hate it: Jake Lloyd's horrible acting, Natalie Portman's inspired impersonation of a woodcarving, the utterly ridiculous Trade Federation droids.3 All of it.

And my son loved every last minute.

I've watched bits and pieces of The Phantom Menace three or four times since then, and it still makes me cringe to hear Anakin Skywalker ask Padmé Amidala if she's an angel. Something screams inside me anytime midi-chlorians are mentioned.4 And when Yoda appears, his face swollen and his features distorted as though he's in the midst of a horrible allergic reaction—possibly to a gundark bite—I just shake my head.

But it's still Star Wars, and my son loves it. And while we were watching it together one night before bedtime, I suddenly felt like Evelyn Mulwray.

I love it!

*slap*

I hate it!

*slap*

I love it!

*slap*

I hate it and I love it!

Lucas has always maintained—despite the froth and fury of fanboys like myself—that the prequels were geared toward children. Watching my young apprentice's reaction, it's clear that Lucas wasn't just blowing smoke; I am a generation removed from what passes for Star Wars these days, but experiencing them with my son has brought an unexpected appreciation for something I was convinced I loathed.

This was originally written for Whateveresque, a web forum maintained by author John Scalzi. It is reprinted here—in a slightly altered form—at my wife's request.

1. If you haven't seen Chinatown, starring Jack Nicholson as J.J. "Jake" Gittes and Faye Dunaway as Evelyn Mulwray, you should; this analogy makes more sense if you have. Go ahead: put in in your Netflix queue or run down to the corner video store. This blog will be here when you get back.
2. I have yet to convince him to pretend to be Lobot.
3. "Roger, roger!"? What kind of nonsense is that? If the droids are all controlled by a giant ship in orbit and every last one of them shuts down when that ship is destroyed, why do they need to communicate verbally with each other at all, much less in an idiotic homage to Gomer Pyle?
4. Riddle me this, George: If the Jedi believe the Sith have all been wiped out, do they not understand that one who will "bring balance to the Force" is going to have to kill a cubic buttload of Jedi? Why would any Jedi in his right mind want to find such a person?