The Great Bastoni

 Come One...

Come All...

To the Greatest Show on Earth.

Appearing daily...The Amazing Bastoni!

He performs amazing feats that will 

both surprise and baffle the audience.

The surprising and baffling part is that this child has 

an I.Q. so low that it can't be accurately measure,

yet he has the complex thought processes that 

allow him to plan, reason and plot far beyond

his supposed "abilities."

From the time Scotty was very small he was able 

to escape any means of confinement that 

we foolishly thought would keep him in 

one place and keep him safe.

He started out small...

cribs, playpens, high chairs,

but soon he moved on to bigger challenges...

baby gates, backyard gates and double-bolted 

child-locked front doors.

The only other escapologist that comes close 

to matching his fame is the great Harry Houdini.

We exhaustively spent the first twenty or so years

 of his life searching the neighbors houses for

The Great Bastoni.

A neighbor we had never met came downstairs one day
to a darling little curly haired boy sitting
in her family room holding her dog.

My favorite story is the time he ran into
a neighbor's house that we had never met,
did a loop around their downstairs and ran right back
out the front door with Steve close on his heels.
 They looked up from their Sunday paper
 in stunned silence as Steve ran by and said,
"Morning."
They never even moved.

If he wasn't running into someone's house
or playing with their dog, he was eating food

 out of their fridge.

His favorite game was
 running down our street with 

wild abandon with us in in hot pursuit. 

He is freakishly fast for a

little guy who consistently refuses 

to participate in anything

that might resemble physical activity.

The sounds of his laughter and

our breathless yelling, "Scotty STOP," 

have certainly been the topic of many 

dinner table discussions in this neighborhood.

In the past few years his efforts have turned to

breaking IN instead of breaking OUT.

It is his daily mission to get into ALL

the locked doors and cabinets in our house.

Doors that are locked to keep him 

out for various reasons.

They keep him from curling up on the beds 

and going to sleep, or from 

making unnecessary messes,

and from eating every morsel of food in the house.

We have key locks, hasp locks, 

and door knobs that need to

 be opened with a penny 

or a pokey thing like a toothpick.

Most doors have at least two types of locks.

None of which can keep him out.

Last week, he came and got me and asked me to help him.

He dragged me to the firesafe, 

handed me a penny and wanted me to help him open it.

The safe???

Really???

Where is he getting this stuff?

I asked him to empty his pockets and this is what I found...

Honestly this made me day.

Coins, toothpicks, a key...typical.

Sonic mint, tweezers and a $20???

That cracked me up.

I guess his resume would include

escapologist, lock picker, safe cracker, 

splinter taker-outer and petty thief.

Once again this little man amazes me.

I wish more than anything that I had access to

the elaborate labyrinth that is his mind...

just a brief glimpse into what makes him tick.

So today I will be thankful for this new set of

shenanigans, because it means he is still growing, 

still learning, and always thinking.

The greater the obstacle 

the more glory

in overcoming it.

Moliere

(and The Great Bastoni)