Eff You, Storm Trooper

Chooch and I were off from our respective school/work places on Monday in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. So we made plans to meet up with Kara, Harland and Baby Theo at Cannon Coffee. Chooch loves Cannon Coffee, for some reason. It might be the tattooed barista who always tries to pressure him into trying some exotic form of hot chocolate, but in the end he always just giggles nervously and says, “No. Just regular.”

Things started out great! Harland and Chooch huddled around a phone while Theo sat quietly in Kara’s lap, allowing Kara and me to have real life conversations.

Considering we were there for two hours, they were pretty well-behaved.

But then the Storm Trooper happened. Harland noticed that there was a drawing of one hanging up behind the counter.

“Chooch, look at the Storm Trooper!” Harland called. So Chooch walked over and together they stood in Storm Trooper reverie.

“You want this?” the barista asked, handing Chooch another sketch of a Storm Trooper she had behind the counter. Chooch accepted it, which irked Harland, and rightfully so, IMO.

He asked Chooch for it and I made him hand it over. It was clear that it meant more to Harland, anyway. Chooch was all, “Ugh fine” and they both went back to their respective iPhone games, abandoning the sketch on the table between me and Kara.

But then right as we were all bundling up to leave, Chooch hovered over the sketch on the table and mumbled, “I want this.”

I reminded him that we gave it to Harland, so Chooch put his head down on the table and sighed heavily.

Harland, aware of what was transpiring, said, “But I want it too” and then laid in a sullen heap on the floor.

“But she gave it to me,” Chooch sighed.

“But only because Harland was the one who saw the other sketch first,” I pointed out.

This volleyed back and forth for a few minutes, this totally mild tug-of-war over some dumb sketch on the back of a Brookline community Christmas announcement. No raised voices. No tears. Just two kids quietly wanting the same thing while Theo silently judged them from Kara’s arms. It was the weirdest “fight” ever.

In the end, I told Chooch he wouldn’t be able to play Minecraft if he didn’t just give the damn drawing to Harland. That brought him back to reality real quick-like, and we all left Cannon Coffee as friends.

***

Later that day, Kara texted me to say that Harland was still carrying the drawing around like it was made of diamonds and gold, and that her husband was going to draw a Storm Trooper for both of them. In the meantime, she scanned the barista’s Storm Trooper and emailed it to Chooch, who was like, “Oh OK. Cool.” Totally blasé, LIKE I KNEW HE WOULD BE! That’s why I was so adamant about him giving it to Harland; I knew if Chooch brought it home, he would lose interest as soon as he logged into Minecraft.

Good god, thanks for the turbulence, Storm Trooper. It’s pretty funny though that in the eight years Kara and I have been friends, this was the biggest “conflict” we’ve ever had!