Keohi and Squid, Octopus and Tentacles...

My son aspires to be a fishmonger. He has told me so. Everytime we pass the wet market we have to stop. He likes to watch both fish and squid and any other live creature be whacked, gutted and sacked. I'm just glad that they don't have live chickens in there anymore. I feel it's important for him to make the connection between getting a piece of meat or seafood to eat and the process of killing the animal or fish, but not exactly my way of killing time...no pun intended. I'm usually trying to stop flinching and digusing my grimace, especially watching the squid being gutted live over the grate on the ground. Yep, cleaned out, its ink tossed, while it wiggles and squirms away. Torture! Augh. I've cleaned fish, but Keohi could watch the killing forever.

The obsession with octopus and squid is potentially at its apex...We scour youtube videos and have watched them--everything from cleaning squid, to National Geographic clips, to documentaries on the Humboldt squid, and someday I will post, but he has them literally memorized. It's pretty intense to see an entire documentary repeated verbatim about the Humboldt Squid. He pretends to be the professor from Stanford, then the fishermen, Dough Pemberton, the diver who battled the octopus etc...then every other character that appears. If he doesn't dive on the sofa in full gear, there is potentially a bathroom/bathtub dive. This has been going on for some months now. I'm glad he has decided against wearing the wetsuit to the playground. Sometimes I really worry about him getting teased. Life is hard when you have a strong imagination. Society doesn't necessarily reward this behavior with acceptance. We've been showing up to the playground over a year now dressed in various guises (Buzz Lightyear, Batman etc...) but have only sported the scuba outfit a few times.

We don't watch these videos as much as one might think for this recitation ability to happen--it simply points to the ability that most children have to absorb and memorize. At one point mom told me I should read Shakespeare sonnets because at least he'd memorize something of interest, but there are no illustrated editions and this just did not work out. So instead, for the past two to three years, Keohi memorized picture book texts and vast sections of Toy Story, and as of this past fall, documentary clips on squid and octopus. (Oh, there is the cooking clip. Every now and then he announces "I'm an Italian!" and pretends he is fishing the thing out of the water and slicing it up. I did immediately click off the Japanese game show. That was too weird. A grown man wrestling a huge octopus he pulled from a tank while various people in white lab coats stood around and the audience clapped. I freaked out at that one. Didn't want to establish any weird patterns there...hard to answer why the guy is hugging an octopus!)

The other day Keohi told me that this was his dream, squid, and he was so thrilled to be carrying the plastic bag with the creature in it, still squirming. When I've asked him why he loves these creatures he tells me it's because he just loves tentacles. Funny, but I remember at around his age, or a little older hating tentacles. I'd eat the dried squid as a snack, but the little round tentacles really creeped me out.

He asks to eat squid every night. Glad it's not always in the wet market is all I can say...