{"id":1658,"date":"2012-08-03T08:11:02","date_gmt":"2012-08-03T13:11:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stories.daddytales.com\/?p=1658"},"modified":"2012-08-03T08:11:02","modified_gmt":"2012-08-03T13:11:02","slug":"the-revenge-of-the-present","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/2012\/08\/03\/the-revenge-of-the-present\/","title":{"rendered":"The revenge of the present"},"content":{"rendered":"

This past Christmas, my oldest received one of those build-your-own circuit kits. I thought’d it be cool, something that he’d enjoy playing around with, and maybe even learn something from (I’m big into that kind of thing<\/a>).<\/p>\n

He received it very much like he would a pair of socks. “Oh, thanks.”<\/p>\n

“It’s a kit where you use electricity and build things,” I said.<\/p>\n

“Yeah, cool.”<\/p>\n

He put it aside, and up until a couple weeks ago it has stayed untouched in his closet. I’m not sure what inspired him to bring it out, but since he did, it’s become a fixture on our living room ottoman, with he and his brother and friends all building circuits that beep and whir and flash. There’s even a propeller that they make spin around.<\/p>\n

I started \u00a0to talk with him about it, but he was clearly uninterested in causality. He didn’t want to hear why the circuits worked. He just wanted to play.<\/p>\n

So I backed off.<\/p>\n

This morning, I woke up to the sound of the little siren going off again and again and again: “Whoop, whoop, pause, whoop, whoop, pause, whoop, whoop…” You get the idea.<\/p>\n

I poked my head out of the door.<\/p>\n

He and his little brother started laughing. “Oh,” he said innocently, “did we wake you up?”<\/p>\n

I growled something and closed my door.<\/p>\n

This year he’s getting socks for Christmas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Caution: grumpy Dad ahead. Enjoy!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[123,118,119],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daddytales-cute","category-daddytales-c","category-daddytales-funny"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6DpYi-qK","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1658"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1658\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}