Tiny Tuesday!

Shelves full of whimsical, clever robots turned my attention toward the booth of artist Shawn Corder’s Get Bent Metal Works. One like this caught my eye, but before I could get it, another person picked it up and bought it. There were a couple of similar ones in black, but I really wanted this color. Fortunately, when I asked the artist, he found another in one of his packed bins. The “radio” can connect to my phone’s bluetooth and play my car’s playlist.

I knew the robot would appeal to Tom. But the radio… Maybe if you read the below excerpt from the first novel in the Neverending Saga, you’ll understand. The son is four, and he doesn’t talk. Doctors can find nothing wrong with him, and a specialist says he’ll talk when he has something to say. His mother has noticed that when she sings to him before bedtime, he listens intently. She wonders if music may be a way to communicate with him.

It’s the early 1950s in New York.

[S]he tucked her pocketbook into her son’s stroller and headed to the nearest Woolworth. It was a crisp fall day, a happy one for him as he listened to the world around them. Inside the store, her radio of choice was an aqua-colored Westinghouse. As soon as they were home, she put him in his highchair with slices of apple and cheese while she unpacked the radio. She knew it was silly to feel so nervous, as if some revelation hung in the balance. But when the radio was plugged in and turned on, she slowly turned the dial until music filled the room.

He turned toward the radio, his eyes wide, and dropped his apple slice on the highchair tray. She was disappointed to hear only advertising jingles, first for Alka Seltzer then for bread. She wanted her son to hear real music. She twisted the dial, hoping to pick up a different station, and he said, “No!”

She forced herself not to react to his first deliberate act of communication and simply turned the dial to the next station. Maybe it was coincidence that the song playing was Eartha Kitt’s “C’est Si Bon,” but she agreed with the sentiment. It was so good. She might have to persuade his father that it was okay for a four-year-old to bark orders at his mother, however.