Friday, October 08, 2010

Where Walks The Taco Man

So, I had my nephew three more days this week. Basically, my sister had problems with the new baby and had to take him to the hospital, so I volunteered to take the two-year-old again. And today, the lad wanted to eat at Taco Bell. For you Spanish readers, I took him to El Restaurante Mejicano De Los Pinches Gringos.

Well, we were surprised and entertained to see a guy in a giant taco costume hanging out in front of the store, waving at passing drivers and feeling high school girls' jumblies. "Look!" I said, perhaps a little too enthusiastically, "It's Taco Man!"
My nephew was, for some reason, terrified of him. I took/dragged him over there, trying to get him to see that Taco Man was friendly and fun, but he was busy raping a crippled third-grade boy, so it didn't help much.*

Taco Man tried to give my nephew five, but the boy cried and hid behind my leg, so I gave up. We went inside to eat and sat by the window. The whole time, my nephew would peer out, keeping track of Taco Man's whereabouts, as if at any moment, he would be gone. Then where would he pop up?

His fear of this silly mascot amused me, so as he ate, I said, "You know, Taco Man's not gonna be happy you're eating a taco. That's one of his children."

The boy stopped eating.

"No, no, it's too late. He's marked you for revenge now."

And then I realized what I was doing. In our most recent episode of The Dunesteef, a well-meaning father makes up a terrible story to stop his son from misbehaving, and it has horrific consequences.

Holy chalupa, I was doing exactly what the dad on "Tattletale" had done. Only with no constructive purpose.

I stopped and tried to make up for it. But that time had passed. To the two year old, Taco Man now looked like this:

Rish "Worst Babysitter Ever" Outfield

*Hey, I'm sorry about that last part. I asked Big if he thought I should cut it out, and he never answer me. So blame him, would ya?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good Lord, even I wouldn't say those things to a kid until he was my 8th grade student. Then all bets are off.

ryanlb said...

In twenty years, this will be one of the many moments that poor kid lists as the reason he became a serial killer.