Chocolate Milk

"Daddy?"  Michael likes to lay on my bed while I dress for work and share with me whatever happens to be in his head.  "Did you know, there are TWO ways to make chocolate milk."

"Um, no," I replied absently, fumbling with my tie.  "What are the two ways?"

"Well, one way is to use the dusty stuff that you mix in with it, and the other..." he trailed off, distracted by some other momentous revelation in his head about the nature of the universe, or possibly by a bug.

"What's the other way, Michael?" I asked somewhat impatiently.  I had to get to work.  If I don't leave by 7.15, the tube's a nightmare, all elbows and armpits for 45 minutes.

"The other way what?" I'm sure conversations with Albert Einstein had a similar kind of flow.

"The other way to make chocolate milk?"

"Oh.  You can mash up chocolate in milk."

I related this conversation to a friend afterwards, who told me that I should have immediately divorced him of the notion, since you can't POSSIBLY make chocolate milk out of chocolate and milk.

This morning, I lay in bed enjoying the relative quiet of an early Saturday morning and the makings of yet another glorious London summer day (it's been several weeks on the trot of nice weather here, we're due for the snapback soon) when Michael came bounding into the room, positively radiating 6-year-old exuberance.

"Daddy?"

"Yes, Michael?"  Both of my children still insist on prefacing every verbal interaction with a formal salutation, even if we've just had a conversation.  Even if we're the only ones in the room.  Even if we're looking directly at each other while sitting a foot apart.  I used to find it endearing, but it's become old.  I hope they outgrow it soon.

"I made something for you and Mommy!"

Sweet, but at 7am, it is not always an entirely desirable thing to have one's young children, feral and fiddly, making things.

"Great!" I replied through a pasted-on smile and with as much enthusiasm as I could muster given the early hour and my visions of strawberry pulp laced with cookie bits and honey oozing off the edge of the dining table onto the carpet.  "What is it?"  I was actually afraid of the answer.

"I'll whisper it to you."  Oh, dear.  "I'm making chocolate milk," he confided in a stage whisper from across the room.  "I'm using my chocolate Easter bunny."

My mind immediately returned to my friend's admonition.  I'd been too protective.  Too sensitive to his feelings.  I really should've given it to him straight.  You can't make chocolate milk by mashing a 5 month old chocolate bunny into a cup of milk.  You just can't.  Now it was too late.  He'd have to find out on his own.

He scampered off, arms flailing, calling for his sister's help.  Moments later, the beeping of the microwave sent a wave of fear through my belly.  Not wishing to be caught up in the inevitable tears that I knew would follow this epic chocolate milk fail, I did what any good father would do.  I slid quietly out of bed, leaving Michele sleeping and blissfully ignorant of the disaster about to befall her, and took a nice long shower.

On my return, a tray containing half a plate of cold microwaved scrambled eggs and a cup of milk with mysterious brown bits floating in it awaited me.

A bit of background.  I have been taught that when someone, particularly a child, gives you a gift, you accept it graciously, even if it's the ugliest thing you've ever seen.  Even if it doesn't fit.  Even if it's covered in mud and birdpoop.  Even if it's cold scrambled eggs the texture of a month-old kitchen sponge and a cup of tepid milk, with chocolatey flotsam bobbing on top and an occasional air bubble liberated from milk chocolate imprisonment breaking the surface noxiously.

Not wishing to seem ungrateful, I necked down the eggs as quickly as possible, and chased them with the milk.  Apart from the fact that the sacrificial bunny was a 'double crispy' one and that I hadn't expected the milk to be so, well, crispy, it was actually not bad.  Sweet, decent amount of chocolateyness, not a bad flavor, and a pleasing sufficiency of chocolate sludge at the bottom.

Michael won't say exactly how he and Caroline made the chocolate milk, beyond alluding to the use of a microwave and various kitchen implements.  I suspect he doesn't really remember, having since moved on to the God-like activity of creating new animal species like the rhinocerfish and the aliphant from a ball of sticky green gummystuff received at a birthday party, but that's OK, it's probably best not to dwell on the details anyway.

To all you naysaying grownups who dismiss as impractical those Lucy Ricardo-esque plans simply because they're unconventional, I say, let 'em try.  If they fail, pick up the broken bits (and keep a bottle of carpet spray handy for the strawberry pulp).  If they don't, you may get a nice breakfast treat.  Encourage their creative side as well as their practical one.  They may surprise you.