What do you recommend?

Nate is 8. As the oldest, he feels so big and responsible and usually is. We try to give him opportunities to "flex his big kid muscles" when we can and he loves it. One of his little man skills is returning Redbox DVDs. In case you're not familiar with Redbox, its a DVD rental vending machine in the entry of grocery stores. Returning a DVD consists of pressing the gigantic "Return a movie" (er sumthin') button on the screen and placing the DVD in the slot the correct way. It takes less than 15 seconds. I think it's a pretty good independent activity for the little man since I can see him the whole time and if I had to go beat off and pepper spray someone, I could. I've also given him instructions many times that if he needs me he should scream as loud as possible and I will rescue him. So far, no pepper spray, no screaming.

A while ago I sent Nate in to Wegmans (best grocer ever, ever, EVER, but I'll post on that another time) to return a DVD. I could see a some people congregated around the Redbox so I knew he might have to wait for a few people ahead of him. Every 30 seconds he would give me some kind of enthusiastic and original hand signal to indicate that he was fine. He finally made his way to the front of the line, completed his task and bounded back to the car. When he got in this was our conversation (pretty much):

Nate: Sorry it took so long, Mom. But I was just fine. There were just a lot of people in front of me but I didn't want you to be worried. The lady in front of me took a really long time because she wanted to get two or three movies but she didn't know what to get. I told her that I recommended Space Chimps because it's really good.

Me (chuckling): Oh really, Space Chimps huh?

Nate: Yeah.

Me: So what did she decide on?

Nate: She got Space Chimps.

Me (trying to be nonchalant): Really? You recommended Space Chimps and she got it?

Nate (satisfied with self and life in general): Yeah, I think she'll like it.

Me (inwardly sarcastic, outwardly sincere): Good. I hope she really enjoys that.

At this point I'm seriously trying not to laugh because he seems like he's feeling pretty great about the big favor he just did for this lady.

We got home and I just kept laughing to myself, which is never as much fun as laughing with someone else, so I called Adam and told him the story. As I was talking to him I kept wondering when Nate had ever seen Space Chimps so I asked Adam if he had seen it with him at some point, but he hadn't. So I yelled to Nate and asked him when he saw the movie and he responded "I've never seen it, I just wanted the lady to get a movie so I could return mine and you wouldn't worry." I could hold it in no longer. I burst out laughing!

So if you are at Redbox and you see this boy:

Even if he seems like the sweetest boy ever (and he is), like this:

But especially if he's dressed in sheep's clothing with one ear sticking up like this:

Don't ask for advice, directions or recommendations or you too might end up with this:

And you'll probably regret it, unless you're the kind of person who has great faith in the unjustified opinions of cute little, random 8 year old boys.