M A C V A Y S I A

A few weeks ago we tried to explain the concept of time to Al. It was a Saturday and he was enraged, in typical terrible-two-year-old fashion, because Ultraman had not yet appeared on Astro Ceria. I showed him the clock and said, “Look, look here. See this little thing here? When it reaches the number two, Ultraman will come on.” He seemed satisfied with my explanation and waited patiently for the show to begin. When it did, and right on time, I thought maybe that meant Al had actually learned to tell time.

Sadly, no. A couple of days later he demanded I forget about whatever I was watching, probably something on Discovery Channel of National Geographic, and switch to Astro Ceria so he could watch Ultraman. When I told him he would have to wait until the following Saturday to watch Ultraman again, he thrust his arm towards the clock on the wall and started screaming, “I want Ultraman! I want Ultraman!” It became apparent to me that instead of teaching him to tell time, I had actually made him think he could use the clock to make Ultraman appear on TV. Great. So my attempt at teaching him to tell time had failed miserably.

Well, no. He often gets very upset when Leen and I leave for work, so we have to spend a bit of time reassuring him that we’ll be back soon. We’ll point to the clock and tell him we’d be back by seven. We figured he wasn’t getting that, but one evening we were a bit late getting home, and Al’s babysitter told us that at precisely seven o’clock he had pointed at the clock and said, “Mummy, home!” 

And then the other night he really surprised us. We were watching something on TV when Al suddenly handed Leen the Astro remote (he can turn the TV on and off but hasn’t figured out how to change the channel yet). “Dibo,” he said. 

“No sayang,” Leen told him. “I don’t think Dibo’s on right now.”

“Nak watch Dibo!” This time he pointed at the clock. “Dibo on!”

“Okay then,” said Leen. “I’ll check but I don’t think…oh look, he’s right!” Dibo had just started on Playhouse Disney.

We thought maybe it was a fluke, but then last night he did it again, at a different time. This time he wanted to watch My Friends Tigger and Pooh; sure enough, it was on.

So it’s cool that he’s learning to tell time, but when you throw in the fact that he’s memorized the Playhouse Disney program schedule, this whole thing looks like it could really blow up in our faces. Don’t even get me started on Handy Manny.